


DEATH COMETH. (BLEACH)

by deityofdiscordanddeath



Category: Bleach
Genre: Best Friends, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Other, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:19:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19329772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deityofdiscordanddeath/pseuds/deityofdiscordanddeath
Summary: "Life or death, I'm always up for a good fight."A family of rare kind of Quincies settles into the Japanese town of Karakura with intentions to train their oldest child to fulfill a prophecy that was deemed inaccurate centuries ago. In the long run, the oldest child befriends an orange-haired shinigami, joining in with his numerous adventures and suddenly her life no longer revolves around some divination about taking down a Quincy king set to take over the world.





	1. Chapter 1

"GOOD MORNING, CLASS."

"Good morning, Miss Ochi!" A round of greetings were returned. She found it so peculiar. No one answered greetings of a teacher in Germany; they would simply ignore and continue onto the lecture as if nothing happened. Not that she minded it, of course; she finds this change of environment almost nice. Morally good.

What she did not like were the number of eyes that were staring at her in awe. She felt some people examine her from head to toe, and she felt mildly uncomfortable under so many gazes. She loved attention, of course, but not from numerous strangers and foreigners she knew nothing about. Her confidence had tipped its fedora and made a run the moment she stepped into the classroom. But, she did not let the stares bother her as much as she knew by the end of the day, she would befriend each and every one of them in the class; that much, she knew very well.

She watched the teacher clap hands together and motion her to come forward which she did immediately. The teacher motioned her hands at her and began to announce loudly, "Today we have a new student with us all the way from Germany!" the teacher then directed her to the board to write her name down which she did in perfect English and broken Japanese that she had learned from a certain someone years ago and had regrettably forgotten now.

"Emilia Nakamura?" A chorus of voices read from the board questionably. She understood their confusion well; she had a German first name and a Japanese surname, and she was more than ready to clear up their confusion once the teacher was done introducing her.

"Nakamura has the highest grades in all her subjects and won a provincial championship trophy for her city Dortmund in Taekwondo last year. We are more than happy to welcome such a brilliant student in our school and in our country. I hope you all will treat her with respect and be kind to her! And Emilia-" the teacher turned her face to the smiling girl and said "- I hope you enjoy your permanent move to Japan. Now, you may take a seat behind Tatsuki there!" She pointed at a dark-haired girl who looked disinterested in her arrival until her championship win was brought up by the teacher. Emilia turned to the teacher and bowed a thanks before walking towards the seat with her small bag and sat down. She turned her face around to Tatsuki girl and motioned her hand ahead, waiting for the girl to shake it. When she took it almost immediately Emilia smiled widely and began, "Hi, Tatsuki! It's a pleasure to meet you. I hope we can be great friends!" When she saw the girl smile back and return her greetings, she smiled even wider and turned her head forward right when the teacher began her lecture.

It seemed once the teacher had began her lecture, everyone's attention had drifted from her to whatever sensei was saying. She pulled out her new books along with a pencil and turned her attention to the teacher, grasping her words whilst jotting down each significant point she mentioned. She wanted to make a perfect impression on all teachers and become a favourite; that's what she did in every school and each place she ever went. Her goals back in Germany were to get on top of the grading polls of each and every teacher; here in Japan, she intended to do nothing different.

It seemed as if time passed too quickly as it was already lunch-time and everyone had either exited the room to eat or began holding their conversations inside the class. Taking a deep breathe before letting it out, she slapped her bag over her desk and took out her lunch box that consisted of two boiled eggs and a pair of lettuce leaves. She grabbed the tiny box and began to make way out of the class, her head hanging down almost in disappointment that she had not made any friends so far. By lunchtime, she had expected to befriend some students at least. But it seemed as if one teacher entered the class, the other exited right after, giving her no time to even introduce herself to anyone. The lack of keenness of anyone wanting to talk to her even few minutes into lunchtime made her frown as back in Germany, everyone seemed to swarm around her, giving her their undivided attention. Here, were her charms not working?

She sighed audibly once again as she slowly made way down the hallway, her head hanging down with her mind elsewhere. It was then she crashed into something no different than a wall, sending whatever-that-was and herself backwards onto the ground like two magnets that simply repelled each other.

Rubbing her forehead harshly, she looked up furiously before standing off the ground and shouting,"Hey, watch were you're going!" The supposed 'whatever' was a boy and he raised himself off the ground with speed matching hers and shouted right back,"No, YOU should watch where you are going!"

Nobody ever dared speaking to her in such a harsh and bold manner which only made her eye twitch in fury and shout at the towering boy, "Don't you tell me what to do, you brat!" How dared her tell her what to do? Not even her teachers ordered her in such a careless manner. Just who did this boy consider himself to be?!

"That is my line!"

Just then a person jumped between them, pushing the two furious boy and girl who had fallen into a glare contest away from each other before one exploded. Emilia felt herself get angry even more, knowing somebody had intervened and prevented her from kicking the boy's ass right there and then.

When her eyes left the boy's she turned them to the person who fell between them, finding it to be the Tatsuki girl she said behind. She was smiling nervously as she stood amidst two hot-heads that were aiming to rip the other's head off as she had her either hand pressed against the other's chest in an attempt to keep them away from each other.

"Ichigo, Emilia. Can you both stop? It's embarrassing." Upon the mention of embarrassing, the girl quickly retracted back and folded her arms over her chest and led out a huff of attitude, still deciding to glare at the boy who had also leaned away and was staring back at her, livid.

'First day and made an enemy. My charms certainly aren't with me here in Japan it seems' she thought angrily, deciding to take a better look at the boy that dared talking to her so rudely.

He was fairly taller than her by a good four inches and had a lean figure to himself. Perhaps what felt like the most eye-peering feature of his were his striking orange-shade hair with some of its strands towering over his head in spikes; she was no aware people in Japan would actually be born with orange shade hair as her mind drifted to that ginger-head girl in her class earlier who seemed really awkward according to her. His skin was peach in shade like the boy tanned himself from time to time, meaning he either worked under the sun or simply had the energy to sunbath. Her eyes travelled from his hair to his brown eyes, then to his nose that seemed to be in a perfect pointy shape, and onto the scowl that seemed to be permanently implanted on his face. Oh God, she hated that already.

Tatsuki cleared her throat after throwing her hands down before beginning,"Ichigo, meet Emilia your new classmate. Emilia, meet Ichigo your classmate along with rest of us."

Emilia, being the mother of occasional childish attitude, wanted to scoff and walk away from him reminding him who he is before he but stopped herself when her inner voice of reason reminded her she needed to befriend everyone in her class by the end of the day, even if it had to be this idiotic hot-headed boy she just encountered.

So, giving up her inner pride, she completely changed her demeanour and decided to give him a large smile before bringing her hand forward and greeting,"Hello! I'm Emilia Nakamura as Tatsuki said. It's a pleasure to meet you!" She did her best not to make it sound fake or forced as years of having to deal with her enemies back in Germany had given her enough training to make her fakest of conversations sound near-genuine.

It worked. The boy was clearly dumbfounded by her change in behaviour as his scowl was replaced with a confused facial expression as he brought his own hand forward to shake her pale one before uttering,"Uh- I'm Ichigo. Ichigo Kurosaki; it's nice to meet you too."

'Perfect,' she thought internally. Now all that remained was flattering the boy with a newfound friendship to add another person onto the list of friends. Even though she wanted to punch him in the face, she had to remind herself that getting off on the wrong foot with a boy as hot-headed as him never proved healthy for reputation.

Tatsuki, who seemed satisfied with the sudden change in environment, sighed in relief and nodded at Ichigo before saying,"I trust you two to get along. Now I have to run after Orihime after you so scared her." Before Ichigo could even protest against her accusation, she ran away from the duo with the speed of light, confusing Emilia who thought who this 'Orihime' person was and how Ichigo had scared her away. Not that she truly cared anyways; she needed to get on the right foot with the strawberry before it's too late. 

Overcoming the period of awkward silence between them, Emilia smiled at him again before asking,"So, how are you doing on this fine day?" It was a weird question, and she almost cringed on the inside at what she had asked him as her inner voice began to scold her for her awful words even though there was no turning back now. 

The boy looked at the short but foreign girl's gleaming blue eyes which were hopeful for an answer, making him stutter as he replied,"I'm uh, doing fine. What about you?" Thankfully to him, the girl really did not care for his stuttering and continued with the flow of their awkward conversation almost naturally,"I'm doing great, though it's kind of weird being lonely and in a new school at the same time." Her carefully calculated answered dropped two hints for him to not only continue their conversation but befriend her in the process. 

Ichigo flung his bag over his shoulder and began walking after motioning the girl to walk alongside him,"New? So, where are you from?" Both were slowly walking beside each other towards the same class Emilia had exited to have lunch on her own. It's okay, though. She did not feel hungry, and she did not mind skipping her meal in exchange for a friend. She did it back in Germany, certainly she could do it here in Japan too. 

Feeling like she could relax with all the smiling that had began to hurt her cheeks exceptionally, she turned her facial expression to one that's warm and monotonous at the same time before replying enthusiastically, "Yes! I'm from Germany and intend to permanently stay here with my entire family." 

"That's cool. Why Karakura of all the towns in Japan?" His question had caught her off-guard. For a moment she wanted to answer 'because of the strong spiritual energy that came off of this town that my family thought could enhance me and my siblings' powers' but refrained herself from it, knowing he would find it suspicious given he emitted a strong spiritual energy himself which she noticed after beginning to walk beside him. His spiritual resembled that of a soul reaper, but she stopped herself from jumping to conclusions; he could be a normal human with high spiritual pressure, she told herself almost too reassuringly. 

"Oh, we came here because my father found this town not only quiet but really nice! It reminded him of Dortmund, so we all decided to move." Her answer was enough to satisfy him because he stayed for a while, enjoying the silence that both walked in. 

Emilia in the silence only realised Ichigo was not as bad as she had anticipated him to be. He seemed like a nice boy that quickly got over their initial encounter and wanted to be on friendlier terms with her which made her ecstatic. She finally felt like she could make friends. 

After a short walk in absolute quiet whilst people around them were practically buzzing left and right, both stepped inside their class which seemed off in no better condition than that of the hall they exited. Some students still remained in the class as they either stood beside the windows conversing about mindless topics Emilia could not care about whilst there were about three boys who were busy in about their own discussions until their eyes fell on Ichigo.

"Hey, guys" Ichigo greeted the trio monotonously as Emilia watched one of the more hysteric boy go over to him and try hugging him only to be met with his Kurosaki's fist colliding against his face. The boy, after getting punched, only threw a larger tantrum claiming Ichigo got even meaner after the incident last which made Emilia tilt her head in confusion. 

'I recall mother getting up at night, claiming she's detecting high amount of spiritual pressure that resembled that of a soul reaper,' she thought carefully. Could it be the incident the boy spoke of had something to do with the soul reaper and perhaps, the hollow she saw outside her home roaming back and forth to detect some spiritual pressure?

Wait. Just why did her mind jump to the shinigamis and hollows upon the mention of the incident? Whatever happened to Ichigo last night could have been anything from a bear attack to a chimera holding him at gun-point! Why did her mind jump to the world of supernatural of all things? Perhaps she was becoming obsessed. With all the insane training she's been doing under the guidance of her mother, she would not be surprised if she has become infatuated with the supernatural world. It was overwhelming, but it was interesting beyond imagination to her. As much as she hated to admit it, she was beginning to prefer the lessons her father and mother were giving her about the other world over her own academic and extra-curricular studies. 

Her train of thoughts was interrupted by a voice. She looked up abruptly, nearly injuring her own neck and found strawberry to be the one calling her. "Hey, Emilia. Don't stand by the door like that; join us." He was sitting on his seat that was surprisingly right next to her, surrounded by all three of his friends who were all looking at her the moment he called onto her. She gave him a warm smile before taking long strides towards him, until she got interrupted by the same brown-haired boy that got punched by Ichigo wrapped her in a large hug. 

"Oh you're the new girl of my dreams. Let me give you a taste of this absolute manliness that God bestowed upon me!" The boy shouted dramatically, using higher vocabulary just to add onto the theatrics he was presenting. For a moment she stood frozen with the boy's arms wrapped around her shoulders tightly, not accustomed to such greeting on first time meeting anyone at all. After a few seconds passed, she led out a giggle before wrapping her arms around his waist just as tightly pulling him close to herself. 

Only a few moments after she hugged him back, she felt the boy pulled back forcefully causing her to release as she watched Ichigo scold him for hugging Emilia like that which only made the boy cry, claiming Ichigo doesn't want him to get a girlfriend before he does. All the sputtering between them made Emilia laugh and turn to the shorter boy who was already looking right at her. He had short black hair that stood up from the tips above his shoulder and was parted in the middle on his face leaving a strand on his face; he had warm brown eyes and peachy skin. He had a kind smile on his face. She watched him brought her hand forward and introduce himself with a very polite smile,"Hello, I'm Mizuiro Kojima. It's a pleasure to have you with us."

Emilia blushed before bringing her hand forward and shaking it gently and introducing herself, "Hi, Mizuiro I'm Emilia Nakamura. Thank you so much for being so kind towards me." The boy gave her a wide smile before saying, "You're welcome, I hope we can become great friends." The girl giggled and nodded before answering right back,"You can count on it, Mizuiro!" 

She then turned to the extremely tall boy with tan skin, looking too foreign to be Japanese dark brown hard that were in waves which hid some of his face away. He had a monotonous expression on his face which confused Emilia a tad bit. Tilting her head, she looked up to meet his eyes and brought her hand forward, giving him a bright smile before introducing herself, "Hi there! I'm Emilia Nakamura. It's a pleasure to meet you. And you are?" 

After a few hesitating seconds, the towering boy grabbed her hand to shake it before introducing himself in his heavily deep voice,"Sado Yasutora. But you can call me Chad." He did not say anything else, so Emilia took him for a shy introverted boy. Despite of it, she widened her smile even more at the boy before speaking happily, "Well then, Chad. I hope we can become amazing friends!" 

By the time, the brown haired boy and Ichigo had quit fighting, making Emilia turn towards the two boys. The boy had a large bruise over his head which made her giggle, knowing Ichigo had landed that one whilst he had pursued his exaggerating drama. She took a careful look at the boy and found him to be handsome despite his goofy behaviour. He had medium-length chocolate brown hair that were separated in the middle like Mizuiro with gorgeous bark-shade eyes and normal skin colour; all of them went along with his slim figure. She would be lying if she said she did not find the boy adorable at all. 

Instead of standing there and watching him pout in Ichigo's direction, she placed a hand on his shoulder only for him to turn around to look at her with near-heart eyes. She wasn't surprised at his look and only giggled before dropping her hand from his shoulder and bringing it forward, introducing herself a fourth time, "Hi, I'm Emilia Nakamura as you may know. What's your name?"

The boy took her hand in both of his' grasp before planting a kiss ostentatiously on the back of it and introducing himself, "I'm Keigo Asano, the foreign woman of my dreams." Him calling you had given him different feedback from two people: a blush with a small giggle from you and a backhand slap from Ichigo. The boy did not seem to care about Ichigo smacking him, but seemed more into Emilia giggling at his exaggerated comment aimed at her. 

Once all five warmed up, Emilia decided to sit on top of Ichigo's table, one leg over the other whilst the others surrounded him, standing; Strawberry on the other hand sat back in his chair, relaxed and doing a man-spread with his hands dug into his pocket. Keigo, after recovering from the daze he had fallen in thanks to Emilia, was the one who introduced a topic for all five to partake in.

"Ichigo, I heard a truck crashed into your house." 

"Yeah.." A gasp escaped Emilia's lips at that, finally realising what had truly happened when Keigo mentioned the term incident. Leaning towards Ichigo who panicked at the girl's sudden closeness, she asked with worry laced in her voice, "Are you and your family well?!" Even though she personally did not really mean the question given how fine he seemed based off his emotions and behaviour but felt compelled to ask nonetheless. 

Seeing the worried face of the girl, the boy laughed nervously before clearing his throat and giving her a boyish smirk, "Yep, everyone's fine. If I wasn't, would I really be sitting in front of you?" At his answer, she only went back and blushed, knowing this would be coming at her. Offering him another giggle she replied, "Fair enough."

It was Mizuiro's turn to ask a question. "Finished cleaning up the mess?"

The boy's facial expression turned from a smirking one to that of a scowl as he turned to Mizuiro, "It's not that easy!"

"Need help?"

"Huh?"

All four turned to Chad who seemed more than willing to offer his help to Kurosaki, the boy that seemed dumbfounded by the assistance just as much as Emilia who could not help but wonder how Chad of all folks could actually help him and his family after the truck incident. Ichigo only chuckled nervously before declining his offer whilst Keigo claimed that he would destroy the house even more, but Emilia's mind truly wasn't there. Her eyes and mind were on the approaching figure of the girl who was giving off spiritual pressure that resembled that of a shinigami. The girl's eyes were particularly on Ichigo, too.

Emilia nudged Ichigo by rubbing her leg against his, sending the boy into hysterics as his face reddened at her actions; she was rubbing her bare leg against his, how could he not? But the girl really didn't care about his reaction as she motioned the boy to look behind him at the raven-haired student. 

"Oh, are you Kurosaki?" The young girl asked the boy whose face suddenly drained of all the colour that had rushed to it. "I'll be sitting next to you from today on. My name is Kuchiki."

At that, he led out a shriek, jumping out of his seat to another side, nearly toppling Emilia over as she held tightly onto the table before Kurosaki could throw her off. Her eye began to twitch all over again as her hands began to lose control, wanting to wrap themselves around the strawberry's neck tightly, but the boy was seemingly in a trance at the appearance of this girl. 

He pointed a finger at her in hysteria before beginning to stutter like some buffoon,"Y-you..!" His actions had made Keigo ask him about whatever being wrong whilst it only made Emilia's anger get replaced with sheer curiosity that she unwillingly had inherited from her dear old father. Now still sitting calmly with one leg over the other, she not only watched Rukia get discussed as the new transfer student beside her amongst her new friends and walk out of the room with a shocked and mildly horrified Ichigo but began to come up with theories on why Ichigo reacted the way he did upon seeing her.

Did he know her? It was more than obvious he did or else he would have not reacted so terribly. Rukia was good at acting but clearly Ichigo was dumb. Where did they know each other from? A major mystery she ought to solve. Ichigo had mild spiritual pressure that she could not figure out whether it resembled that of a shinigami or quincy. But one thing is for certain: she will get to the bottom of the truth no matter what.


	2. Chapter 2

" **OYE, SWEETIE. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE HOLLOW.** "

 

"I really would, dad, IF YOU QUIT DISTRACTING ME WITH YOUR STORIES ABOUT YOUR DRUNKEN FIGHT WITH A GRIZZLY BEAR."

"Emilia is right, honey. Quit distracting her; she has an adjucha level hollow to kill." 

The large man pouted before throwing his hands in the air and sitting back in his chair, folding his hands over his chest grumpily. 

Closing her eyes and shaking her head momentarily later, she gathered the minimal spiritual energy from the room at the tip of her fingers before creating a beam of fire and launching it at the adjucha-class hollow that resembled a gigantic toad with a mask on. When the fire beam missed the hollow, hitting the wall behind it, she cursed under her breath as her eyes went over to the monster who ran at her, mouth all open to fire a cero right at her. 

Rolling over the ground to another nearby corner of the massive room with drops of sweat pouring down her forehead, she jumped to her knees before absorbing the reishi and creating a rather small bow with an large arrow fixated in it. When she watched the hollow make a run at her after crashing into wall without so swishing side to side, she narrowed her eyes, aiming the large arrow at its mask carefully, making sure her hands were not shaking whatsoever. Once she had locked her target, she released the arrow smoothly as it traveled with the speed of light towards the hollow before piercing it in the eye as it protruded from the other side of its eyes, causing it to led out a wail of sheer agony, disappointing in the air only moments later.

Huffing, she blew her wet with sweat hair out of her face before placing a hand on her hip and respiring in relief, knowing she no longer has to play tag with a hollow. 

The family of five, with an exception of two other children, were inside the secret underground training base that they had recently constructed with their filthy wealth somewhere in outskirts of Karakura Town so that it may never be found. The gigantic technologically advanced training base that the family had built in the matter of a month on the hands of private workers was five kilometer long from all four sides and eighty feet tall, flat. The ground was earthly along with the walls unlike the ceiling which was decorated with hundreds of thousands of white tiles. The training base comprised of the mentioned training ground, a portal that provided a pathway between Hueco Mundo and Karakura Town through which they baited hollows inside to kill fixated in one of the walls, a transparent but unbreakable control center above the ground where from one can not only control the entry and exit of the hollows but entertain themselves by watching the show from above. The entire base was hidden from the eyes of not only Soul Society but entire Karakura Town as her father had performed a kidou on it which made it seem invisible to the ordinary eye of man and shinigami; only a captain-level shinigami could detect it if they set their eyes on it. Other than that, it looked like an ordinary plain unapproachable hill it was built inside.

A loud solo round of applause went in the air causing her to shriek and fall to the ground with a thud as she looked up, finding her father clapping loudly and hooting for his daughter with pride dancing in his eyes. "Bravo, my daughter! You certainly are my blood! You've made me so proud today." He went on to begin shedding crocodile tears as he went on to wipe them away ever so dramatically. "You made our deceased king proud, O my sweety Emilia- OW!" He was cut off when he was smacked upside on the head by his wife who had her eyes closed in irritation as he began to pout and glare at his wife. 

"Why would you do that? I only was appreciating our daughter!" The woman shook her head in disappointment at her husband, making Emilia frown knowing she will not compliment her even once. "You idiot, she did not do something on god-level. Adjuchas are feeble creatures with strength but no brain. Put her in front of a Vasta Lorde and she will die before she is even capable of manipulating the spiritual energy around her!" 

Her mother's words stung. They always did. But she knew she was very right. She had no chance against a Vasta Lorde; she was weak. She needed to become stronger than this. She was too far from perfection and needed to reach there.

The woman turned to her daughter, taking a deep breath as her cold expression subsided into one that held crisps of warmth, "I can't deny you did exceptionally well today despite the fact that we decreased the spiritual energy in the area for you to manipulate. We are working on your tactics and timing tomorrow on with adjuchas. That's enough for today. Pack your things, we are leaving to home. You look like you need a shower." 

Emilia's frowning face was replaced with a smiling one after hearing her mother compliment her for her efforts today. It is certainly a rarity, her mother complimenting her during training and genuinely being kind to her at such time. After all, her mother completely switches personalities each time they enter the premises of these grounds, training her or watching her afar defeating hollows with expectations for her daughter to use all her tactics; the same tactics that made her the last Etch Quincy of her kind with unimaginable powers and battle victories in past. 

Adolfa Falkenstein was not only powerful by all means but a beautiful woman too. She was a Germanic woman that possessed beautiful Nordic looks: fair and pure skin that was decorated with numerous scars from all the battles she proudly took part in and funnily she looked even more beautiful with those scars on, long blonde hair that were always braided all the way down to her waist beautifully, a five feet ten inches tall but slender figure which made her taller than most men around her, a mildly face that held its purity and mists of innocence despite of the dark battle scar that ran from her upper lip down to her chin, blue eyes that seem cold on first glance but held warmth of generosity .

Though she was a kind woman who was there for her children during the good times and the bad especially the younger two, there was always something cold to her towards her older daughter. She did not joke with her or offer her the same affection she gave to her younger children. Rather, she compelled her to become something very close to the term 'perfect'; she desired perfect grades, perfect reputation, a perfect social circle, a perfect quincy of her becoming. And Emilia did it all. She brought herself to perfection for her mother because she knew why her mother was striving so hard to create a diamond out of coal under all the pressure. 

As for her father, Daijiro Nakamura, he was nothing but a kind soul. He was a six feet tall peachy-skinned man with a lean figure and young face. His head was covered with thick lustrous brown hair with a large streak of white in them he got after getting electrocuted whilst dancing in the rain under a tree during a thunderstorm just to make his wife laugh. His eyes were a grey shade and his mouth was always curved in a smile to make both his wife and children smile. He was a kind and goofy man that rarely ever got angry; always making sure that Emilia always remained motivated for her greater purposes in life. If Emilia were honest, her father is what always kept her going on her mission to become a quincy. 

Like her mother, her father had remained a powerful quincy in his days prior to retirement, a general as her father would go on to tell her privately. He fought battles alongside his mother as she was his second-in-command during the worst battle their kind of quincies fought.

 

 

After a quick shower, Emilia entered her bedroom as she began to prepare herself for bed. With the lights on, she stood in front of the mirror, drying her hair as her eyes were solely on her figure. She was certainly on her mother's level attractive;  with her athletic five feet four inch figure, skin so fair and drained of colour during occasional sicknesses, she looked almost pale, a small chest unlike most girls in her new school, a heart shaped head with baby-pink cupid lips, a small dotty nose and pale blue eyes that she really did not admire so much. Her hair was a peculiar mix between brown and blonde strands decorated with natural waves she cut to her elbows regularly; her eyebrow's on the other hand were simply as dark as her father's which only confused her. Why were here hair and eyebrows two different colours? A question she may never be able to answer for herself. 

Once she was done drying her hair, she slipped into her pajamas and began to get her bed ready for a long night's good sleep; that was her intention until a knock came on the door. She turned her head around only to find her mother entering through the door with a normal smile on her face, though it did not reach her eyes truly.

Backing up, she sat down on the bed gently before looking into her mother's careful eyes, questioning,"Mother, is there something you wish to ask?" Even though she deliriously wanted to be frank with her dear mother, she knew it would be something Adolfa would hate and Emilia avoided at all costs. Her thoughts were much more consuming her mental energy at times.

Her mum walked over to her, sitting next to her daughter and trying to smile more happily as she replied with a question she intended to ask her ever since her return from school after the first day, "I've been meaning to ask, Emilia. How did your first day go at school?"

The girl smiled from ear to ear at the question as her mind went back to the day she spent at school with all the people who became her friends so quickly, answering thoughtfully. "It went amazing, mother! I joined the girl's taekwondo team as the teacher's assistant and I've taken it upon me to also join the handicraft's club because you told me." She mentioned the last part whilst narrowing her eyes at her mother who only laughed silently at the grumpy look her daughter was giving. Seeing her mother laugh she only continued, "And before you ask, I've also uh made many friends today too, one particularly being a boy named Ichigo Kurosaki." His name only made the girl smile without her even knowing.

Her mother smirked at the smile that unintentionally appeared on Emilia's lips before nudging her daughter with her elbow, asking her to go on. Adolfa's behaviour only made the girl red before overcoming it all and replying to her mum's sly hinting, "No, mum. I do not find him attractive in that sense. What I truly sensed about him today was his peculiar spiritual pressure. I could not identify if he was a soul reaper or a quincy." Replacing her humorous demeanor with one that was serious, she answered her daughter carefully, "If he is a soul reaper, he shall pose no harm to you. Our kind of quincies and shinigamis have always been on good terms. If he's a quincy from those of Yhawach's services, avoid him at all costs. Don't you dare mingle with their likes."

Emilia only nodded her head, knowing why Adolfa was warning her so endlessly. She then went on to say, "There's also this shinigami in our school who came on the same day as me. Her spiritual pressure was not really high like you had warned me theirs would be. Why is that?" 

The older woman pondered about it for a few seconds before answering pensively, "If their spiritual pressure is really low like you mentioned, then it's either of the four things I'm about to mentioned. One: they're weak shinigamis. Two: they've mastered lowering their spiritual pressure in midst of humans in case a hollow does not detect them. Three: they're in a gigai which has the capability of making them more human, hence lowering their spiritual pressure in the process. Fourth: transfer of powers from themselves onto a mere human, though that seems very unlikely since it's deemed a huge crime by the Seireitei."

Nodding her head, Emilia intended to tell her mother about how Ichigo Kurosaki seemed to know her and more when her mother's phone rang off. Adolfa picked it up, seeing it was signalling the appearance of a hollow that was a few blocks away from their residence. She looked into her daughter's curious eyes, announcing the appearance of the hollow to the girl who smiled enthusiastically at it. 

"You don't need to change into your quincy uniform, Emilia. Just rid of that Godforsaken thing and return home. This is a no-class pathetic hollow; it should be easy enough for you. Oh and wear this around your face. Make sure nobody identifies you"

The girl nodded obediently before picking up her quincy cross from her side-table along with a white scarf she wrapped around her face tightly before hauling out of the window onto the next house's rooftop excitedly. Upon taking one look at the map that appeared on her mother's 'phone', she had exactly memorised the location of the hollow's appearance as she continually jumped from one rooftop onto another in an attempt to quickly reach the place as her grip around her cross, whose chain remained wrapped around her wrist, tightened in anticipation. 

Upon reaching the particular house, she swiftly jumped off its rooftop and threw herself inside the house through the window by grabbing the standing pillars of it, nearly wounding herself in the process. After recovering from her heroic entry, she got back on her feet and ran towards the lighted living room where she could feel the dark spiritual pressure emitting from. 

The scene in the living room was not all too pleasant to her eyes. This was one of her classmate's house, preferably Inoue Orihime who had been too kind to her today at school. Her body was laying on the ground motionlessly whilst a chain attached to it traveled all the way towards the spirit of the frightened girl who was shaking as she watched the snake-like hollow pin some girl to the ground relentlessly; she could not get a proper view to identify the girl but she could not care less. 

Just when Emilia intended to interfere and end the hollow's life on sight, Inoue attempted to attack the hollow's arm only to be tossed aside along with the other girl who turned out to be Tatsuki, wounded in the shoulder with a large gash. Seeing a dead friend and a wounded one on the ground, clearly hurt inside out only surged fire inside the heart of Nakamura. She wanted to tear the hollow's head off its shoulders and crush it between her feet mercilessly. 

She whistled at the pathetic creature for it to turn out which it did on command as she raised her arm in the air with index and middle finger pointing to the ceiling, gathering all the spiritual energy in the room at their tips before transforming it into a into fire before launching the beam at the hollow's head only to miss it by an inch because it bloody ducked. 

A round of curses left her left as the creature slithered towards her before slapping her across her concealed face with its tail, sending her flying into the kitchen as she slammed against a cupboard, breaking it in pieces with some grazing her skin. For a moment, her entire body hurt too much for her to move at all. The impact of the slam had made her feel weaker than anticipated, making her feel almost puny as her mother's insults began ringing in her ears. 

It was then her friends came in her mind. They were in trouble and she needed to save them as the only person in the house capable of tearing the creature in pieces. After muttering incoherent curses under her breath, she slowly rose from her place groaning and ran towards the living room only to see the hollow on the verge of attacking Orihime's spirit. 

As if on impulse, Emilia gathered the spiritual energy from the air before manipulating it into a bow and arrow and aiming it at the hollow's head. Quite to her dismay, she did not get to launch it as Ichigo Kurosaki, clad in shihakusho with a massive sword in his hand holding off the hollow's attack. 

'So Ichigo was a shinigami after all. But why did his spiritual pressure seemed so..mixed?' she thought. Seeing the situation as no time to think about such things, she brought out her arrow and released it at the hollow only for it to create a pathway to disappear from sight; it only made her hands roll into fists as she yet again missed another chance of killing this stupid hollow, hence proving to her mother just how weak she was. 

"God dammit," she cursed under her breath furiously moments prior to punching a hole into the wall. She was livid. With each and every step, she was just proving to her mother that she was nothing but a failure tonight. She could not even end a mere hollow with no special attributes: it was not even a bloody gillian! It was even lower than that, yet Emilia missed left and right and got injured in the process. Her mother's trust in her defeating the hollow felt so misplaced in the moment. 

Despite of the overwhelming sadness that had engulfed her, she looked up to find the hollow returning and proclaiming Orihime dead. Manipulating another arrow in the air, she fixated it carefully before releasing it only for it to miss once again, blasting another hole in the wall instead because of a certain strawberry moving to attack the hollow and later getting slammed out of the house. Seeing the opportunistic moment, she created another arrow aiming at his head only for it to be detected by the blasted creature as it expeditiously made way towards her with Orihime in hand. She could not fire an arrow at it with the expense of hurting the girl, so instead she steadied her legs before landing a kick in its face, creating a crack in the mask and sending it flying backwards, wailing in pain. Unfortunately the kick wasn't enough for him to release her or enough at all as it recovered quickly and grabbed her from the legs with its long tail, sending her to the ground with a thud before throwing her straight out of the house. 

Emilia had closed her eyes and awaited the moment she would hit the ground, but quite to her bemusement she did not. Instead, she was grabbed by a pair of two arms. Peaking from the corner of her eyes, she found the same strawberry holding her steadily in his arms with them wrapped around her legs and shoulders, holding her close to his chest. A crimson colour set on her cheeks at their closeness and just the way he was holding her. For the first time in the night she was actually relieved wearing a scarf to conceal her face.

"Who the hell are you?" Ichigo asked, almost shouting in her ear and deafening her in the process literally ruining the fluttery feelings that had overcome her entire body. Rolling her eyes, she motioned him to concentrate ahead at the hollow instead of her. Getting the hint after a few moments, he looked forward to the hollow who held Orihime in his hand so effortlessly.

"Don't move," the hollow commanded Ichigo before slamming him in the head with its tail, sending not only him but Emilia to the ground, rolling through the dirt of the road together since the idiot let go of his sword but not her. At that moment, the girl just wished he had let go instead because she crashed her head left and right with him as his body weight just doubled over hers. 

When both came to a halt, Ichigo was laying right on top of Emilia who was not only suffering from her injuries but suffocating under his weight too. When she saw Kuchiki girl came running, the quincy motioned her to get the tall boy off her before she dies underneath him. Once the shinigami had gotten him off her, she led out a sigh of relief but regretted moments later when her body began to protest in ache. But again, there was no time for her to concentrate on herself; her friends were in danger and even if she were useless, she would still defend them with her life if she has to. 

Sitting up almost slowly, she crawled over to the unconscious Ichigo before shaking him to wake up alongside Rukia. If this boy does not get up, then they were in deep trouble because she herself knew her limits; she was in no position to jump left and right to attack the hollow. She was wounded, and her mother had taught her not to over-exert the use of her powers in such dire conditions. 

"Ichigo, get up right now!" She shouted at the boy who would not budge from his place. Her eye began to twitch, almost livid, at the boy's stubbornness because only a few seconds after it she turned his face towards her before landing a harsh backhand slap on his face which jolted him awake, shrieking in pain.

"What'd you do that for?!" The boy cried angrily, rubbing his cheek repeatedly. 

"Because you weren't getting up, you brat!" She shouted right back at him, glaring at the strawberry who gave a breath of exhaustion and touched the part of his forehead which was bleeding down onto his face. Rukia felt it necessary to asked where he was hurt to which he replied that it mattered not and that he was okay, making Emilia shake her head disappointingly. He sure was an idiot. 

"Don't forget, Ichigo. He may be Inoue's brother, but he's still a monster. He does not have a heart, kill him without fail"  ' _The hollow is Inoue's brother?! No wonder why he was being all sappy, asking her if she remembers him in the beginning_ ' thought the quincy almost unsurprised. Her mother had taught her about the hollow's ordeal and how they were souls of living that were either converted into these dreaded creatures by negative emotions or were devoured by other hollows to become that. She was ten when her mother had given her a lecture about it, and even seven years later the lecture was sitting at the top of her head, unforgotten.

Her mind had drifted off to her mother's netherworld before she was called back to Earth by the one and only strawberry between the three who was giving her blunt looked whilst questioning, "Mind telling us who the hell are you and why are you helping us?" 

Fixing her scarf carefully so that he does not recognise her at all, she replied blandly with a bored look in her eyes which were half-lidded in irritation,"Who the hell said I'm helping you at all? Also, isn't your friend in danger as we speak? Shouldn't you uh, save her?" 

Placing a hand over his chin, he began to think almost idiotically before stuttering, "I uh- I, you're right, I guess." What an idiot, she thought almost too fondly. Just how did he even become a soul reaper. Was the Soul Reaper academy really accepting dumb people these days? If yes, then she'd like to toss-

With a swoosh, Ichigo flew towards the house making her squeak at the amount of cold air that hit her. Her pale eyes were now fixated at the the massive hole in the wall through which Kurosaki had entered inside the building. Seeing this as a perfect opportunity to leave the entire scene until the right time comes for her to terminate the hollow, she rose from the ground and began to walk away despite of her wounds begging her to rest. Right now, she needed to finish off the monster so that she could tell her mother proudly she completed her mission. As much as she had admitting so, she intended to use the shinigami as a pawn in her play. She could not care less for the Kuchiki calling her; rather she was making way to sit on the rooftop of house in front of Inoue's where she will perfectly shoot the Hollow in the head, killing it ultimately. 

After numerous attempts of trying to get on the rooftop but failing miserably, Emilia was finally able to position herself to end the hollow's story for tonight and return to her bed. With a sigh, she began to keep a close ear and close eye on whatever that was happening inside the house where she could distinctively hear Ichigo say.

"You know why big brothers are born first? It's to protect little brothers and sisters that follow."

His statement hit a nerve in Emilia. With her condition and weakness, she knew she could not protect her own nine-year old brother and five-year old sister. They were young and legitimately powerless amongst all three; she was to be their protector and guardian for the rest of her life. If her mother and father die, she will never be able to protect them with the powers she has right now. She felt weak again. She did not want to feel weak, but she was feeling puny. 

Shaking her head furiously in an effort to rid herself of these negative thoughts and concentrate on the scene, she turned back to the hollow who was slamming his head against the wall trying to pry the mask off its face. 'Huh, a hollow with its soul fighting right back? That's interesting. Going to have to ask mother about this one surely,' thought she as she continued watching the hollow attack Ichigo, yawning. However, her sly demeanor dropped when the hollow escaped the house and almost came too close to her before nearly getting attacked by the strawberry; the hollow spat a poison of sorts at his hands, causing Kurosaki to drop his sword to the ground along with his entire self.

Not really having any energy to fight, she only watched the ruckus continue now with Orihime hugging the hollow despite of its teeth sinking into her shoulder. What an idiot. However, what truly took her by shock was when his mask began to fluctuate rapidly as it appeared and disappeared off its face. 'Mother certainly never taught me about this.' It seemed as if the soul was trying to fight the hollow. The scene was open to her, and so was the hollow. She intended to attack him, but this was becoming too amusing for her to cut in between. 

Then, the hollow's mask got shattered into pieces, revealing a young man's face, possibly Inoue's brother. Her jaw dropped at the raw sight. She needed to ask her mother to educate her on it all. It was fascinating albeit very confusing because it proved hollows weren't as soulless as quincies like her mother and father make them out to be. 

When the clearly sound half-hollow picked the sword to die by it, she thought almost ruthlessly 'not on my watch' before raising her hand in the air once again with both previously held fingers pointed at the sky and materialising a much more powerful beam of fire at the tip of her fingers, pointing it at the head of the hollow, awaiting for him to finish conversing with Inoue. 

Once she saw him get done and aim to hit himself with the sword, she straightened her arm and grabbed onto it with the other one, releasing the fire bolt that went straight through its head, sending a shock wave between them all. The hollow's eyes went wide before disappearing into thin air as Inoue cried out its name over and over again. 

Ichigo and Rukia turned to find her, the culprit, behind this merciless killing who was staring right back at them, standing over the rooftop all better now. Before any of the two shinigamis could run after and capture her, she had already made a run by absorbing the energy in the air and using it to disappear from their sight.

' _I'm sorry, Orihime, but I would rather kill your lost brother a hundred times over than return to mother as a disappointment. '_

 


	3. Chapter 3

**SHE HAD A NICE FAMILY.**

That is what she always appreciated about her household. She had a nice family. Her siblings, though awfully irritating and masters of lame sense of humour, were rather obedient and listened to whatever she and her parents had to say. Jannik, being the middle child was not only the sly one with terrible sense of humour but a massive prankster that happened to forget that Emilia was his older sister with the way he casually behaved around her. He had his father's hair, mother's eyes and rest physical features. As for his personality, it resembled their father's with a short temper that went over Emilia easily. Anja, like Jannik, had her father's hair along with his eyes; rest of her resembled their mother with an exception of personality of course. She was still a child and acted as such, so no one could really configure whose personality she will favour with age and time. 

All five were seated around the kitchen island, eating their breakfast before all of them leave to their respective places. Her mother and father both joined the local police department with her mother as an officer and father, a private investigator. They did not wish to go for it here like they did in Germany, but it was one of the best ways for them keep a track on all the crimes that may be related to the supernatural world. All siblings went to schools that were close to each other thankfully, so Emilia took it upon herself to walk Anja and Jannik to their respective schools every single day and return them in case they need protection. 

"Alright, I'm done with breakfast. I'll go and grab my things from upstairs. You two-" she pointed her fingers at the two little devils sitting and stuffing their faces with her mother's handmade pancakes like two starving wolves "-finish up quickly. Today's the second day and we don't want to be late, yes?"

Jannik narrowed his eyes at her before, stopping at his second bite before snarling at her with his mouth full, "By the time you're done coming downstairs, all of us would have transcended into our old age, including Anja here." His implication that she takes hours to grab her things only cause her to roll her hands into fists before nearly going at the boy, but stopped herself when she caught the deadly glare her mother was throwing at her. "Jannik, don't talk with your mouth full of food; it looks disgusting. Also talk to your older sister like that again and it will be my sandal against your tiny butt." 

Giving the glaring younger boy a victorious smirk, she ran upstairs despite the injuries that covered her body and prevented her from making drastic moves like she did on regular. Thankfully, her uniform covered all her wounds  including the bruises over her legs that her long socks veiled from the naked eyes. 

After entering her room, she grabbed onto the sewing kit with her karate and basketball jersey, shoving it in one small bag and then throwing it over her shoulder along with her regular school backpack. Once she had her gear ready for school, she went over to the mirror and pulled her long hair into a high pony-tail elegantly before applying her regular colour-tinted lip balm and shoving it into her jacket's pocket; she was all ready. She grabbed her quincy cross from the vanity set and wrapped it around her arm, exiting her room.

With her ready, she ran back downstairs to find both of her siblings awaiting her. Jannik still seemed grumpy about the earlier scolding whilst Anja looked excited upon setting her eyes on her prepared sister. All three walked over to the door where Emilia pulled on her sneakers and then went on to put on shoes for her struggling siblings. Done with helping them, she looked around to her mother who waved them a goodbye after warning them to stay safe.

She held Jannick's hand in one and Anja's in another as they began to make way towards their schools first. Her sister was jumping each step instead of walking like sound human whilst Jannik had began a conversation about one of his favourite superheroes in DC Comics with her. She was fully engaged in it with him despite of keeping a close eye on her youngest sibling whose hand she was tightly gripping onto, afraid she might let go and cause a ruckus. 

"And in the latest issue, Hawkman got all smoochy with Hawkgirl which was so disgusting to watch with my naked eyes. I felt like plucking them out, Emil-" He was cut off by someone behind them shouting 'HEY' on top of their lungs. Emilia carefully looked around, finding the shout to be all too familiar for her liking. 

It was the one and only: Ichigo Kurosaki. 

Emilia halted in her steps along with both of her siblings who were also looking around one-eighty degrees, awaiting for the running boy to catch onto them. When he finally reached them, the oldest siblings put on her best smile before greeting him almost too happily, "Good morning, Kurosaki." He looked like he did not get enough sleep last night judging by the a near invisible layer of darkness underneath his eyes. Well, she certainly could not blame the boy after the interesting fight he had with the hollow last night. 

His lips did not fold into a smile and rather remained in his permanent scowl but greeted Emilia politely nonetheless, "Morning, Nakamura." The girl was smiling too much to Jannik's liking who suddenly felt an aura of protective young brother overcome him. Crossing his arms sassily over his chest, he looked at the much taller teenager with his own scowl on face before asking, "Who are you and what relation do you have with Emilia here?" His thumb went over to point at his sister with attitude. 

Seeing his change in attitude, the older Nakamura narrowed her eyes at her younger brother with a quirked eyebrow. Ichigo looked taken back by the question as he carefully stuttered his answer out, "I'm Ichigo Kurosaki and uh- she's my friend.": She watched her brother nod curtly at the boy in approval before tugging at her sister's hand to get moving along as if dismissing Ichigo's entire existence there and then. 

His persistence annoyed Emilia so she turned to Ichigo with a polite smile, questioning every so nicely, "Would you like to walk with us to school? I have to drop them off and then go school myself. If you don't want to walk, then it's totally oka-" Before she could complete her sentence Ichigo butted in and answered her quickly, "It's okay. I'll walk with you, and besides we still have time until school begins." He looked at both of the small children whose hands she was holding onto tightly and protectively before changing the subject. They resembled her in many aspects, mostly physical appearance. "So these two are your brother and sister, huh?"

She tightened her grip onto their hands as she began to walk with Ichigo who had now gotten in front and was leaning an ear at her whilst his eyes were ahead as he initiated walking alongside the three. "Yes, my brother Jannik Nakamura and sister Anja Nakamura. Do you have any siblings, Kurosaki?"

With one hand placed in his pocket and other rubbing the back of his head, he began to reply, "Yeahh, two younger twin sisters called Yuzu and Karin." She smiled at the information, nodding  at the information he gave her. He was slowly opening up to her even though they met yesterday and became immediate friends despite of how things started off. If he was masking his disturbance with her appearance last night at Inoue's residence, he was doing a great job at it because she was incapable of detecting any signs of him acting like his mind were simply not here. 

The rest of walk towards her siblings' school was a quiet one as Jannik could not bring himself to discuss things with his sister in presence of an intimidating strange with bright orange hair, whilst Anja had quit jumping left and right and began to make way towards her school almost quietly. She was childish and made sure to reinstate that firmly in the eyes of her other two siblings every once in a while. This time, she made sure of it by wanking her hand, making her sister to release grip on her hand before walking over to the Kurosaki boy, tugging on his uniform like some baby. 

When Ichigo stopped in his steps to look at the small child with long hair that flowed past her freely and a chubby face with a childish smile on it along with large grey eyes which were looking into his eagerly. "Huh?" He led out, turning to Emilia's sister completely. The child raised her hands at the boy, motioning him to pick her up before saying in an shrill but childish voice that was soft in itself, "Pick me, Ichi!" 

The youngest Nakamura child had an awful habit of jumping into any person's arms she found nice or 'pretty' as she said in her defense at times. She did not care if that person was the enemy or the stranger; she simply jumped into their arms as if every soul were as pure as her's. Emilia had sworn she would make Anja get rid of this heinous habit harshly, but never brought herself to shout at the innocent and naive girl.

"Anja, get back here!" Jannik shouted at his younger idiotic sister before Emilia could even get around to ask her to come back. His brother was clearly protective over his younger sister even though he was young and a mere child himself. Emilia turned to Ichigo and began, "Ichigo, it's okay if you don't pick her up. Anja, come back here-" She was cut off by the strawberry who picked the child up in his arms, placing her on his hip which made the young girl even happier as she wrapped her arms around the boy's neck, making him chuckle. He turned towards Emilia, his brown eyes gleaming at her.

"It's okay, Emilia. I know how needy and stubborn younger sisters are. I'll carry her to school," Emilia did not need to fake a smile there at him. Her lips curled upwards almost naturally as she watched on at her ecstatic sister who was hugging Ichigo as if he were her older brother. The oldest sibling would be lying if she said she did not feel a little jealousy right there and then.

Seeing the pleasant smile on Nakamura's face, the strawberry turned around and began to walk with the three-year old holding onto him as Jannik who still held onto his sister's hand began to follow after them towards Karakura Primary School. Emilia could not help herself but watch the two closely as Anja dug a tiny hand into Ichigo's hair, playing with it whilst excitedly telling him how nice his hair was and how pretty its colour was. The compliment had only made the boy smile at the child before sending a compliment right at her, making the youngling smile even wider before snuggling her head into his neck and tightening her grip around it, possibly nearly choking him as he began to make familiar sounds but could not seem to bring himself to pry the child off. 

Even though she had met Ichigo yesterday, she could not help but find the scene adorable. Her motherly instincts had overtaken her body and her near-idiotic brain had began wandering to places it shouldn't be. Right now, it was simply imagining Ichigo fathering her children and pretending Kurosaki was holding their child instead of Anja. It had been a bloody day and she was already imagining the boy in such a manner and it only made her want to decapitate her own self. Her brain was dumb, only making her shake her head furiously and look ahead instead of her sibling or the boy.

"That idiot likes Ichigo, you noticed it right?" 

"I'm aware, Jannik."

"You know she'll grow attached to him too given how much of an idiot she is?" 

"I'm also aware of that, Jannik."

She heard the boy exhale audibly, turning to her with a scowl on his face that resembled Ichigo's too much. "As long as I don't see the carrot-top in our house, I guess it's okay." Emilia barked a loud laugh at that before ruffling his hair after reaching right before the front gates of the school. 

Both Ichigo and Emilia stopped once they had stepped inside the busy primary school full of children left and right. Kurosaki carefully brought down Anja from his hold whilst the oldest Nakamura knelt before her brother, putting her hands on either shoulder and looking at him dead serious in the eyes. "Jannik, look after yourself and look after Anja. If you so feel the spiritual pressure get heavy-" 

"Grab onto the cross I have around my neck and call your name, got it already, sister. Now leave me; you're embarrassing me in front of my friends." Satisfied with his answer, she rose from the ground and bid him a goodbye as he grabbed onto his younger sister's hand, running off with the youngest Nakamura who was waving a goodbye at Ichigo screaming "Goodbye, Ichi!" , completely ignoring Emilia's existence once again. 

She sighed with relief and motioned Ichigo to walk alongside her peacefully, all alone now. Ichigo's face was still all bright and his mind elsewhere, making Emilia tilt her head in confusion and ask the boy, "What're you smiling about, Kurosaki?" He looked at her momentarily before turning to look forward again before replying, "Oh, uh your sister asked me to walk her to school every morning from now on." So Jannik was right when he mentioned Anja getting all mushed up over the strawberry.

"I expected nothing less than that idiot. Whenever she likes someone, she can't seem to let them go. Don't listen to her, okay? You don't have to walk her to school or anything. She'll forget about you in a day or two-"

"Pfft, like I want her to forget me. I like the kid; reminds me of Yuzu when she was small. I want to walk her to school, if that is okay with you, of course." He interrupted her nonchalantly and later shrugged as he began to walk with his hands at the back of his head like a doofus. 

Giving him another natural smile, she replied, "I wouldn't mind company on the way."

 

 

"And so that's exactly how I won a Senior Taekwondo tournament with a broke arm," She huffed proudly, closed her eyes to add onto the same dramatics as Keigo who was staring at her in awe and praise only to burst into tears moments later at the heroic story.

"Emilia, you're so powerful and resilient. I truly feel honoured to have befriended you. What do you say, Mizuiro?" He cried like a child, turning to his other friend who had a pleasant smile on his face and only nodded in agreement. 

The trio that comprised of Keigo Asano, Emilia Nakamura and Mizuiro Kojima has been practically inseparable ever since they first meet yesterday. All three have not only been sitting beside each other during classes, passing notes left and right when the teacher was not noticing them but sat together during lunch too, gossiping like a group of scandalous women. Even though Keigo and Mizuiro were not really her type of people she used to keep in her friend circle back in Germany, she did not mind the change at all; rather she loved it. Their grades were not the best, but it wasn't like they would influence hers at all. She had already impressed all the teachers, throwing behind some boy by the name 'Ishida Uryuu' she really did not meet as he was absent on her first day. 

"Oh crap." Keigo thought aloud, making Emilia and Mizuiro turn to him confusedly. "I forgot my lunch downstairs. I'll be right back." And with that, the boy raced downstairs leaving behind his two other friends who looked at each other for a moment, shrugging before both began to walk upstairs to the rooftop of the shorter building in the high school to eat lunch together and enjoy the fresh air of summer. 

Once both made it at the top stairs, finding the door open that made them exchange glances of suspicion, they stepped outside and began to walk together towards the nearest side of the building where they can sit and enjoy lunch at. Instead of finding a sweet spot to eat lunch at, they found the Kuchiki girl and Ichigo Kurosaki standing close to one another with the female shinigami holding out a pack of..juice? towards him.

The two, for the third time today, exchange mischievous glances with one another after sharing an almost telepathic conversation with one another before casting their normal looks upon their faces so that  neither one in the second duo could find them suspicious as they walked over in their direction, Mizuiro announcing 

"Hey, you two are together again." 

Ichigo turned at both of his friends who were steadfast approaching him as Rukia began to curiously eye the pack of juice. 

"You two are pretty close, huh?" the raven-haired boy asked again which made Emilia want to go full smirking mode at the two who were, in the moment, pretending they were totally not standing close to one another. Even though she knew very well the purpose behind their closeness, she still decided to join into the fun and pretend to be as oblivious as possible. After all, nobody knew her did they?

A scowl decided to settle over Ichigo's face before he replied annoyingly, "Mizuiro..fool! Do we look like friends?" 

The boy feigned a pout for a moment before asking, "Am I wrong?" before turning to Emilia, asking her to back him up with his eyes to which Emilia shook her head strongly and said, "Nope. They ARE close, aren't you Kurosaki?" That was the moment she finally released her long concealed smirk that was on her face for so long. It felt good. 

Seeing the glare he was sending out to Mizuiro get stronger by the minute, Emilia got closer to the raven-haired boy and nudged him to actually drop it before he gets his butt handed to him by the taller boy. Heeding her warning, he shrugged and said, "Oh well, if you say so. But Ichigo, you should be more aware of what people will think."

"Stupid, if I cared about what people thought, I would have dyed my hair black." 

"That's true." 

Mizuiro then turned to Rukia and approach her with his usually adorable smile behind which he hid the plots to end the world on his own, or so Emilia thought after spending the entire day at school with him and Keigo post Ichigo's abrupt departure. "Hello, Kuchiki."

The girl faced the boy with a polite facade that screamed 'innocence' and 'pure' before greeting him ever so kindly, "Hello, err.. Kojima!" The boy only smiled at that before speaking again, "Right! Me and Emilia haven't introduced ourselves to you yet. I'm Kojima Mizuiro, age fifteen and I like-" He was cut off by the one and only Kurosaki who finished off the sentence for him with a snark "-picking up girls."

Seeing Mizuiro shocked at what Ichigo said so bluntly only made Emilia throw her head back and laugh loudly before brushing past both arguing boys and going over to the girl who was struggling to punch hole into the pack of juice with the straw. She stopped right before her and smiled, deciding to introduce herself, "Hello there. I'm Emilia Nakamura like Mizuiro said. It's a pleasure to meet you!" 

Rukia put on her innocent girl act back on before introducing herself with enthusiasm similar to that of her, "Hello, Nakamura! I'm Kuchika Rukia; it's a pleasure to meet you." 

"I'm sure we'll be great friends, Rukia!" "Me too, Emilia!"

The half-blonde girl turned around to Ichigo and Mizuiro after overhearing their topic of Mizuiro's interest in older women before side-commenting, "Pfft, I'm an older girl and he has not hit on me, hence proving Mizuiro is a good boy, aren't you?" She placed an arm on his shoulder as she looked at him with a large smirk on her lips. 

Both boys looked at her, confused, before asking curiously. "How old are you, Nakamura?"

"I'm seventeen and turning eighteen next month!" 

"EH?!"  

"But you look younger than all of us!"

She smiled almost too slyly and confidently before patting both boys on the head as if they were children, replying to their protests, "Guess you can say that's the best part of me." 

Before Mizuiro or Ichigo  could say anything else, they were all interrupted by a loud shrieking voice that belonged to Asano, "There's the beautiful new transfer, Kuchiki!" His eyes were wide in shock and happiness despite of being set of Rukia who looked like she really did not care. He went on to ask her what she was doing there with them all. Muzuiro only pointed at the strawberry, accusing him of luring her there which made his eyes go wide and deny the claim only to be thanked by a teary-eyed Keigo that went off to introduce himself to Kuchiki. 

Hearing him announce this to be a lunch party, Emilia walked away from them a few feet before deciding to sit on the ground with head against the railings as to continue contemplating where the heavy spiritual energy was radiating from. It continued to get closer and closer, and she did not like it one bit. 

She looked up to the blue sky before closing her eyes for a moment, enjoying the warm summer breeze that was whistling past her face and hair freely, blowing strands of her natural waves with it. She preferred the warmth of Japan over Germany's ruefully cold and harsh winters along with its deadly hot summers. Here in Japan, one could even take joy in the summer without having to worry about something like sweating without doing anything that would cause the body to heat up. 

Her senses were instantaneously disrupted when she felt the ordinary yet mild sinister pressure be too close to her. Opening her eyes, she hurriedly looked around to find where it was coming from only to find her friends sitting around and gazing admirably at something in their middle which was seemingly the center of attention there. Quickly getting on all fours she began to crawl towards them before pushing Mizuiro aside who was leaning next to that thing. She halted  in her steps when she realised the source of this negative energy was a bloody bird. A bird of all things.

But how? 

"EMILIA, C-CLOSE YOUR L-LEGS!" Pouting, she looked around to find Ichigo backed against the railing with his face crimson red from all the blood that hand rushed to it. He had a hand planted over his eyes but was peaking through the small distance between his fingers nonetheless. 

Only after a good few moments she took to understand why he was acting so peculiarly, she decided to sit on the ground with her legs closed, hearing Ichigo sigh in relief at that. She turned around at the boy and narrowed her eyes at him before turning back towards the bird that was eyeing her curiously as it began, "Hello, my name is Yuichi Shibata. What is your name?"

'Oh great, a bird with reitsu that isn't only giving off former contact with evil energy but can also talk; it's almost as if the term normal is a social construct that doesn't exist,' she thought after hearing the creature introduce itself. She chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of her neck before answering, "Hello, Shibata. I'm Emilia Nakamura. Du strahlst böse energie aus und ich werde herausfinden, warum." said the last sentence in German aloud because nobody in their midst knew it and she wanted to get her curiosity off her chest. 

The girl backed away from the bird when she watched Chad get close and sit before it, making her presume that it belonged to the larger boy. After jumping on her feet, she walked up to the edge of the roof where she was far from anyone's hearing and viewing range before pulling her phone out of her pocket and ringing her mother. 

After a few seconds, the woman had picked it up and answered the phone with a boring tone, "Hello, Adolfa Falkenstein speaking. Who is it?" She probably did not check her daughter's number prior to answering the phone; not like she ever did in any phone call's case when she was at work. She was a busy woman after all.

"Mother, it's me Emilia speaking. I have a question uh-" Her mother cut her off before she could even begin asking with "Young lady, why are you using phone in school hours and why aren't you in class? I gave you this phone for school to detect hollows and call me in case of emergencies." Oh boy, she did not know it was lunch time at her school; it seemed she forgot to take a look at her daughter's time-table. 

Taking a deep sigh, she replied to her mother's questions, "Mother it's lunchtime here and I called you for that reason. There's this bird that's radiating spiritual energy, and it also reeks of a hollow's scent and pressure as if it had been in its presence. What do you think of it?" 

There was a long period of silence on the other side of the call. She only believed it to be her mother thinking of whatever she had told her before coming up with a carefully thought out and analysed answer. When she finally heard a deep exhale from the other side, she pressed her ear against the phone as she heard her mother begin. "If the bird isn't radiating evil energy from itself but from a contact with a hollow and has not been devoured by the thing, then it means it's being used by hollows as a bait though I can't be sure." 

The girl took her mum's words in, grasping them with a clear mind before asking, "Should I follow it around in case-"

Once again her mother decided to cut her off but in a much harsher tone and almost bluntly, "You are not killing a single bloody hollow until you heal. Clearly I saw your capability in case of real life situations. You're coming straight home after school where I'll heal you and then I'm training you the entire night. And yes, I don't want to hear a single protest coming from your mouth, young lady." 

She hated it when her mother treated her like she was weak; she wasn't willing to hear about how her friends kept coming between her and her prey, and how the hollow was simply too fast, no. Despite of killing it, her mother was still disappointed in her. She loathed it. An inaudible groan escaped her lips before she silently answered the phone, "Yes, mother." 

"I have work to do, Emilia. I will speak to you when you return home. Take care." 

And with that, the phone call came to an end leaving Emilia more distraught than at ease. Pressing her forehead against the railings silently, she looked out at the towers that stood afar, her mind wondering why she was so pathetic in comparison to her mother and father. She was the daughter of thousand of years old general and warriors from the line of strongest quincies, yet she was so weak. She felt a pang of hatred towards herself for the first time in so many years. Closing her eyes, she tried to enjoy the warm wind blowing on her face instead of concentrating on her mother's ever icy words aimed at her. 

"Hey, are you okay?" She turned around to find a frowning Mizuiro standing with his hand on her shoulder, a look of concern in his dark eyes. He had clearly noticed the girl walk away to talk to someone on the phone before sulking against the edge of the barrier as if something had begin to bother her. 

Dropping her depressed demeanor almost immediately, she smiled widely at the boy even though it never reached her ears as she replied in a fake happy tone, "I'm completely fine, Mizuiro! Why would I not be fine?" 

The boy shrugged unknowingly before answering, "You seemed a little down after you were done speaking and I got worried, Emilia. Are you sure you're okay and everything is okay back home?" She only nodded at him, careful enough not to drop the facade so that he does not sense her being depressed. Last thing she wanted anyone to realise she was feeling down since yesterday. Her denial made the boy shrug again, smiling at her before taking her hand and running over to Keigo who was left standing alone, awaiting both of his friends to join him to run downstairs as lunchtime had come to an end. 

"Emilia, where did you go off to?!" Keigo shouted upon seeing the girl as he ran in her direction like a child. She smiled at him politely before answering, "I was talking to my mother and enjoying the fresh breeze, Keigo!" The boy huffed at that before throwing an arm around her shoulder casually and saying, "This is the time of our youth where we should be enjoy our friends' company and being carefree. You have your entire old age to enjoy fresh breezes." 

The girl chuckled at his answer whilst Mizuiro only nodded in agreement with Keigo as the boy dropped his arm from her shoulder, the trio beginning to make way down the rooftop with a different topic of discussion that all actively engaged in. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**ANOTHER NIGHT SPENT IN THE CONFINEMENT OF THE TRAINING BASE FOR EMILIA**.  
  


With sweat dropping from her forehead profusely, she was heavy heaving and too audibly as she stared at the hollow that was gazing at her with hungry eyes. It was unlike the other hollows she had been fighting for the past three days consecutively under the surveillance of her mother who barely trained her, rather baited the worst of worst hollows to exhaust and injure her to the body she can barely move the next morning. This particular hollow was far too fast for her liking. It was in shape of a masked cheetah and ran left and right as such.

"It's time you learn how to manipulate other elements other than fire. That move is not only reminding me of someone I ruefully hate but irritating to the core. Try water again this time." Her mother was speaking of her firing fingers move.

She used it because she found it the easiest, not to irritate her mother. It was also very effective in ending hollows, but for some reason it annoyed the older quincy and possibly reminded her of someone from the past because each time the girl would practice it she would hear her mother curse someone by the name 'Bazzard Black' repeatedly before talking about Emilia becoming more and more like him without even meeting him 'yet'. Whatever she meant by yet, the younger quincy did not know but it was clear Adolfa knew something that she never revealed to Emilia. She hated secrets and was dying to know about who Bazzard Black was and why her mother hated him to the point her hate was beginning to be directed at her own daughter.

When the hollow made a run towards her, she jumped a few feet away before gathering spiritual energy from the room to attempt manipulating into water, her mind into it. After a few nanoseconds when she opened her eyes to find water formed out of reishi dancing in her finger tips, she smirked in victory before entwining her fingers with her either middle and index fingers pointing at the hollow, launching a large wave of materialised water at the hollow only for it to let out a large wail as the water comprising of lethal reishi hit it before disintegrating.

Falling to the ground in exhaustion, she saw her mother disappear from the upper control center to standing right in front of her with arms folded over her chest, face as stoic as ever. She was looking down on her daughter, examining her sweaty and exhausted condition whilst knowing how hard she has been training the past three days since she was denied from murdering a hollow that was haunting a spirit living inside the parakeet. Ever since then, the girl was coming straight home from school, doing homework before taking her mother to the training base with her. They trained for eight hours every night with minor breaks where both mother and daughter rarely conversed and rather the girl only got rest before a hollow appearing for her to kill. Adolfa admits, she has been too harsh on her daughter ever since she came beaten and wounded from the fight with a friend's hollowfied brother, but it was imminent for her to harden her until her and Daijiro's time came knocking and the woman knew how close it was. That's what scared her for her own daughter. They had so much to teach her but so little time; it hurt, but they did not show it. Not now. Not for the next two years.

"Rest for fifteen minutes. After that, I'm teaching you a few things myself." Just when she intended to move away from her daughter back to the control center, she felt a hand tug on her jeans. Looking down, she found her own panting daughter to be the one grabbing onto them. If circumstances were different, Adolfa would have reminisced on the times when Emilia was only months old, crawling and tugging onto her bottoms, motioning to feed her as a babe. Now was not the time.

"Mother, sit with me a for a while," the girl breathed out. After gazing pleadingly into her mother's eyes for a few seconds, Emilia watched her mother give in and sit down crossed legged next to her panting figure splayed over the large ground.

The two were almost silent in the empty earthen training ground with the younger Nakamura's deep heaving being the only sound echoing throughout the place. Seeing her daughter over-exerting her body's limits made Adolfa feel guilty but she could not help herself. She knew the basic quincy techniques with manipulation of reishi around her and materialising things out of it easily to use weapons, using hierenkyaku, blut and excelling in archery well, however what she lacked were the expertise in her true powers as the Seltensten etch quincy along with Gwöhnliche's more powerful techniques that she was yet to teach Emilia but deemed too mature for her age. To put it more clearly, the oldest Nakamura had too much to learn. She was not a fast learner in case of Quincies ways like she was in her school academics, and she saw that the moment her daughter came beaten and battered from a fight with a no-class hollow.

"Mother." Her daughter called out to her. Her gaze diverted to her as she quirked an eyebrow in her direction as if asking her whatever was it that she intended to ask her. Her daughter closed her eyes momentarily before opening them and asking her, "Who is Bazzard Black and why do I find you talking awfully of this person with father? He does not seem bothered, but you just hate him. Why?"

'She finally asked about that piece of shit, huh?' She thought even though her mother visibly stiffened at the name and how curiously her daughter was uttering it, so clueless, so young, so immature. She hated it. She had not even met the animal yet and she sounded so curious about him, just like her father Daijiro when he feels like prying in other's business.

When Emilia noticed her mother's body go rigid at the question, she quickly began to say, "If you don't want to answer, it's totally okay! I'm fine with it!" But her mother had already readied herself to answer naive Emilia's question without having to bring up the future and what it held for the young girl.

"Bazzard Black, who called himself Bazz-B was...part of Yhwach army centuries ago when the civil war between Quincies was waged. He was a fiery tempered boy who was loyal like a dog to Yhwach. He, along with the entire Sternritter murdered most of us, but especially him. He's the reason I have the largest burn on my body" she did not show the burn that was embedded on her entire back which stretched from her neck all the way down to her spine's end because Emilia had seen it. "He was half Selten quincy, and he stabbed his own kind in the back for Ywhach. I hate that boy with my whole heart and soul seeing as he killed many of our men and women mercilessly." 'And I hate him for what you will be sharing with him hopelessly, but that's for another day'.

The young girl stood up from the ground, no longer heaving like an animal, huffing in disgust before frowning at her mother, "You never told me this before but I'm glad you did now. For that scar he gave you and the death of my brothers and sisters, Bazz-B will die by my hands!" Giving her mother a large smile before forming a blue sword and pointing it to the top, she continued, "I already hate him, so certainly I will be the one killing him for being a traitorous animal."

Her mother could only smile sadly at her daughter's promise she knew she would not act upon. 'You will be saying and doing the exact opposite of everything you promised when you meet him, Emilia.' She hated it. She hated Bazz-B and she could not help but loathe her daughter at times for what the future holds for her.

Emilia, seeing her mother smile in such a melancholic manner almost worried her, wondering if she said something wrong. Tilting her head in confusion after making the sword disappear she questioned, "Mother, did I say something wrong?" The woman looked up to her caring daughter, the hatred that had crept into her heart disappearing upon seeing those curious bright eyes. She could not hate her daughter for what she had no control over. She was her tiny Emilia Nakamura whose birth brought joy into the hearts of not only Daijiro and her, but their deceased king whose lingering spirit declared her his successor despite of their long extinct kind. To them, she was their only only hope. A guardian to the young. A prodigy to the old.

The Seltensten Quincy Pride.   
  


Adolfa got off the ground, dusting her clothes off before pulling Quincy cross out from the pocket of her jeans before wearing it around her neck and turning her face towards her daughter, stoic once again. The woman opened her palm, collecting energy in it before snapping only to create a tiny tornado in her palm, swirling in her palm fiercely. Emilia found it cute, but she knew how much lethal it was given her power's strength. She then found Adolfa taking the same hand, forming it into a fist, punching the ground with a force that cracked the ground underneath them as the protruding began to spike in Emilia's direction.

Shrieking, she stepped aside as the cracking in the land began to travel with the speed of light to a further corner. Both mother and daughter heard a loud explosion go off, possibly because of the spiritual energy that Adolfa had given to the earth crashing against the hard walls with unimaginable force.

She made a one-eighty degree turn to look at her mother with wide eyes, wondering why she performed either. The woman gave her a blank expression before answering ever so casually, "I will teach you how to create air and shock waves in Earth with spiritual energy tonight." Looking at her clock, she found it to be nine in the night.

'Enough time for me to teach her.'   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Another morning had fallen the Nakamura girl as she lazily began to walked towards school with both siblings holding her hands tightly. She felt exhausted from last night's training with her mother that went until three in the morning. Neither of the two had planned to extend their training hours into the morning, but since Emilia took about three hours just to create a miniature tornado the way her mother had materialised, they had to work up all night until the girl had capability to perform both element's magical properly, without mastering it whatsoever. 

The past weeks, it had been Ichigo walking with her to school upon Anja's previous pleads but today Mizuiro and Keigo had decided to walk alongside her since the black-haired boy in the trio had his regular driver on leave, making him incapable of picking and dropping Keigo Asano with him. And so there were the group of five, two being children amongst them, waiting outside Ichigo's house for him to wake up so all of them could get going together. Jannik, it seemed, was already losing his one ounce of patience by waiting for the strawberry to wake up and get going while Anja did not seem to mind the wait since Ichigo will be walking her like every single day.

"Why do you look so sleepy, Emilia?" Mizuiro asked the girl with his usual adorable smile.

Emilia chuckled at his question inaudibly before answering exhaustively, "Is it that obvious? Huh, I spent the night uh doing the art assignment for school. I suck at art, so it took me quite a while before I perfected it." The boy nodded silently as all of their eyes diverted to the figure standing in Kurosaki's residence.

Ichigo was there, fixing his tie hurriedly as he began to shout, "Sorry! I overslept! I'll be right out, so wait for me!" His appearance only made Anja smile ear to ear though she did not say anything because let's face it, she did not care if she was late to school; she only cared about being carried in Ichigo's arms like the baby she was. Jannik, on the other hand, simply thanked the heavens.

"Hey, this is unusual." Keigo called out whilst Mizuiro only asked him to hurry up to which he nodded almost too happily and disappeared from sight.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Once the group of now four had reached the school, Emilia threw her bag on her chair with a loud thump before zipping it open and pulling her art assignment out, holding it to her chest as she decided on asking everyone left and right to show her their piece of art on the subject 'How do you see yourself in the future?' and analyse how hers was properly.

Deciding on the girls to be her first experiments, Nakamura took long strides towards them before stopping at their desk with a big go-to smile on her face. All three girls looked at her, exchanging greetings kindly before Emilia jumped straight to the topic, "Hey, have you guys done the art assignment?"

All three nodded enthusiastically before each showing their own proudly; finding Tatsuki's art the best though no match to her's, Orihime's a little..weird and the other girl's decent, she showed them hers to which their jaws dropped and passed compliments, making her smile and thank them kindly. She did the same with other students as she went around the class, asking each student to show her their piece of work to which they did, making her realise that her artwork was probably the best of all; all until she went up to the unidentified boy who was sewing on a piece of fabric in silence, not interacting with anyone.

Standing over his desk, she smiled widely at him even though it went unnoticed by the busy boy who still had not seen her, of course. "Hello, unknown boy I did not meet on my first day. Did you do the art assignment?"

The boy jumped back in his seat when he saw the strangely foreign girl staring at him with a pleasantly wide smile on her lips. When he had connected his eyes with hers, Emilia finally got a better of his features. Bespectacled, the boy had a handsome oval-shaped face with fair features to him; blues eyes that were far darker in shade in comparison to hers, milky skin, a thin nose with baby pink lips that were formed into a thin line from all that concentration and clear skin that a former acne-infested Emilia would have envied. He had straight, chin-length black hair framing both sides of his face which brought out his features even more.

He was cute and nerdy alright.

Pushing his glasses upwards, he coughed loudly with his eyes turning downwards not willing to meet her eyes which confused the Nakamura girl, as he introduced himself almost irritatingly , "I have a name and it's Ishida Uryu. Also, yes I've done my assignment as always."

' _Finally I met Uryu_!' she thought excitedly as she fist bumped the air happily without him noticing before beginning, "So you're the boy every teacher continues comparing me with in case of academics! It's a pleasure to meet you, Ishida. I'm Emilia Nakamura. Can you show me your piece of work?"

The boy gave her a glance of sheer confusion before he put on his cool demeanor and pulled out his work of art and put it on the table for her to examine. Setting her eyes on it, they only went wide in shock. It was almost as good as hers, and on top of that they had chosen similar occupations! He had drew himself standing in a court as a lawyer, colouring and picturing the entire setting of court along with the judge perfectly. It was a picturesque piece of work, and she felt a sense of peer pressure toppling over her for the first time here.

"I, uh- we chose the same jobs, haha." With that she put down her own piece of art on the desk next to his before she had painting herself suited and booted in a pencil skirt and white blouse with a traditional black coat assigned for lawyers and judges alike, standing next to the jury box and asking them something. From a distance, she had already painted the Judge's bench where a senior judge sat and was looking down grumpily alongside an empty witness box.

"Your piece of art is quite astonishing, Miss Nakamura. I find it quite coincidentally amusing that you and I chose about the same occupations." The boy complimented her as he took a careful look at her piece of work, only making her blush a tad bit. It was one of the first times some stranger she did not know as a friend had complimented her here. Feeling tad bit intimidated, she chuckled nervously before answering back.

"Yours is no match to me, Mister Ishida. You are really good at art, and if I hadn't known you intended to become a lawyer just like me, I would have advised you to start a career in art." The compliment was enough to settle a crimson shade over Uryu's cheeks. He fixed his glasses again as he pretended to brush the comment off and pretend to be cool. 

"It's nothing, Miss Nakamura. It comes almost naturally in my case." A short period of silence fell between the two as she continued looking at the boy with a slender build's piece of art until her eyes went over to the floral design he was sewing in the class carefully prior to her intrusion, reminding her of it being homework for her handicraft's club classes. A ting of brightness shone in her eyes, realising that the boy might be in the same club as her too!

Deciding to break the quietness, she pointed at the piece of cloth that was in his careful grasp not long ago and questioned curiously despite knowing the answer to her own ask, "Hey, sewing a floral design onto a piece of fabric given by the teacher is what we were given as yesterday's homework in our handicraft's club! Are you part of it?" 

The boy looked up and nodded coolly even though she could see his eyes light up at her statement and question all at the same time. Coughing into his hand, he nodded before replying, "Yes I am. Sewing and designing are my specialty as you can see-"

However, the 'yes' was enough for Emilia who excitedly clapped her hands together several times surprising the boy who gave her a confused look as she began to ramble quickly, "That's amazing! We share another class together, though it's one where I am no match before you as it seems because I'm awful at sewing and simply all things affiliated with handicrafts. I don't know why my mother thought I required to learn a few things that women need to learn, weird of her no? So back to me being awful in handicrafts, can you please tutor me on this stuff?" She turned her eyes extra innocent with a pout, bringing her eyes together in praying manner as she got on her knees before the boy who was frightened at the sudden change in behaviour. "Pleaseeeee, Mister Ishida? Please. Please. Help me succeed in those frightening classes before I fall into failure and become a disappointment which will make me depressed and then I'll end up committing the ultimate seppukku-"

The boy, seeing her insistence, raised his hands in the air, near frightened at her long rambling before interrupting her in a loud voice enough to make her halt mid-sentence, "Okay, okay! I will tutor you, just don't commit suicide." He fixed his glasses on the bridge of his nose again as he looked down, uttering under his breath, "Not like I have much to do after school anyway- ARGH!" 

He felt a pair of arms wrap around his neck excitedly as he felt his side being pressed against someone tightly. Too shocked to turn his face or do anything, his burning ears only caught words spoken loudly out of sheer happiness and enthusiasm, "Oh, thank you thank you! You're my life-saviour, Mister Ishida. You're amazing!" And with that, she let the surprised boy go who had gone full-blown red at the way the girl had hugged him so randomly and out of blue. She was still a stranger to him but it seemed as if the girl thought the exact opposite given the way he was in her hold for a few seconds before being released after getting glances of shock from almost everyone in class. 

Even though his cheeks were still a dark crimson from the hug and her mere enthusiasm on being taught by him, he still tried to maintained a lukewarm attitude as he looked down for a moment, nodding curtly at the bubbly girl before answering, "There is no need for you to thank me, Miss Nakamura. I am simply doing what any person would do if their fellow is in need of assistance." He looked up into her bright blue eyes that were looking at him so happily it made no sense whatsoever. "Would you like to discuss the timings and place during our lessons later on? Class is ought to begin soon." 

She nodded eagerly at that, replying "Sounds great! We'll talk during our sewing lessons then, Mister Ishida." She did not know why she was being so darn formal with his name, but since he was using her surname with formalities, she decided it might be best she does too. After all, she still does not know what kind of boy Uryu is at all. She could not wait to find out. 

Looking back, she swiftly walked over to Ichigo and her gang that was gathered together and discussing something all smiles and laughter, though the strawberry's behaviour was too positive to be real. He was actually smiling and laughing with Keigo and the rest unlike his usual scowl that conquered his face on regular. After a careful analysis, she figured he was faking it. 

 

It had been five days since she had joined Karakura High School, and given the amount of time she spent around Rukia, Ichigo, Keigo, Mizuiro, Chad along with Tatsuki and Orihime, she had easily configured each and every person's personality out. It wasn't very hard for her given the amount of time she spent observing their behaviour and other characteristics whilst partaking in discussions at the same time. Out of all the closer friends, she was the closest to Ichigo who walked with her every morning and talked every day. He had began to drop his closed exterior and became more close to her despite of the short amount since her moving to Karakura Town. It was nice knowing someone had her back whilst she had his without him having to know. Nobody knew who she truly was. 

Yet. 

From all the time she spent with him, she knew the way he was acting right now was too unlike him. He would never act so giddy and happy when his normal behaviour was far too dissimilar to one he was putting up right now. She kept it at the back of her mind to ask him regarding it when they're alone together. 

 

Standing in her crowd of friends with a smile on her face, Keigo turned to her and screamed loudly, throwing his arms around her shoulders which she let him do without any problem. "Oh, Emilia! You were hugging the biggest nerd in our class! Are you seriously planning to leave us all for some goody-two shoes that is the most boring person in the world? He's so gloomy, what do you see in him you can't see in us?" He went on crying with tears pouring down his eyes in a very comedic manner. 

She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before hugging the boy back, telling him proudly, "I would never see anything in anyone the stuff I see in you, Keigo. So drop the idea I'll ever leave you and Mizuiro for some stranger." Going on to release him, only wrapping an arm around his shoulder and grabbing Mizuiro from the other side and pulling him close to her, throwing the entire trio in a group hug dramatically before crying out happily, "You two are my buddies! We are never breaking apart!" At that, Keigo began to cry tears of happiness whilst Mizuiro only laughed. 

Ichigo and Chad only had a sweat drop from their head at how weirdly the three boys and girl were acting. They were best friends. Nothing of seriousness could be expected from a friend circle that comprised of Keigo Asano. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

" **GOOD AFTERNOON, STUDENTS. I HOPE YOU'RE ALL DOING WELL. THE WORK YOU OUGHT TO DO TODAY IS SEW YOUR FAVOURITE QUOTE FROM ANY LITERARY PIECE OF WORK ONTO THE PIECE OF FABRIC I'LL HAND OVER TO YOU ALL**."  
  
  


"Oh God, just take my life right now," Emilia whispered, smacking her head against the desk with a loud thud. Seeing the mood drop of one of the most intelligent students in whole of ninth grade made the teacher chuckle as she placed the white piece of fabric on her desk. As she went forward, handing Orihime Inoue, who was sitting next to her on the shared row of desks, she slowly raised her head and narrowed her eyes at the white stainless material as if it were her arch-enemy in this story.

Inoue, noticing the girl's clear displeasure in this lesson wanted to comfort the girl and cheer her up but she did not know how to strike a conversation with her without having Tatsuki around. Emilia Nakamura, though exceptionally friendly and kind towards everyone in the class, clearly had intimidating aura that resembled Kurosaki's at times. She was rarely seen cross or undergoing the effects of negative emotions, but there was one time Tatsuki narrated the girl's first encounter with Ichigo Kurosaki and spoke to her of the awfully similar temper that both had. The more time she spent around her, observing and watching, her best friend's words seemed harder and harder to believe. The German-Japanese biracial teenager seemed too kind and polite to be suffering from exact temper issues as Kurosaki. She was always smiling and laughing with her two best friends, Keigo Asano and Mizuiro Kojima who she befriended in a day, and the strawberry who of all regular friends she seemed to be the closest to.

The blondie and strawberry duo always came to school together and Kurosaki is seen every morning walking her and her siblings to school, the girl's youngest sister always in his arms happy; various witnessed who had 'spotted' them walking also claimed that the boy was particularly 'too happy' with the child in his arms and speaking to Emilia at the same time. Students were all making rumours that either Ichigo was with Emilia or Rukia with the blonde one out of the two being the most probable 'lucky girl'.

Inoue did not know what to make out of it. She liked Emilia a lot since the blonde was really kind to her and often brushed the rumours of them being together; she was like that with everyone. First day into her arrival to school and she had everyone befriended, talking to her, laughing with her; first day into her arrival she had the teachers not only admiring her for her perfect grades but her respectful demeanor in their direction. Given her championship in taekwondo, she took over the role of substitute trainer for the martial arts club which led to so many boys and girls joining the club almost immediately. Each student who attended those classes, including Tatsuki, spoke of how great she was as their mentor whenever she taught and emphasised on improving even the worst student's abilities.

If Ichigo was dating her, then it did not seem surprising at all. Both were almost very compatible in all aspects personality-wise, so she would be more than happy to know Kurosaki found a girl who was exactly like him - except she did feel jealous. The girl had climbed the tops so effortlessly, made friends and had made each teacher love her. From what she knew based off others accounts, she had a perfect family too; two siblings and parents who were successful people in police department. She was never sad; always happy in the company of friends. She was successful by academic standards and in personal life too. Inoue almost envied her at times. Emilia had everything unlike most people. Maybe that is what seemed so intimidating about the girl to her; she had everything that others did not.   
  
  


The Nakamura girl was beyond confused in the moment. Orihime Inoue who sat next to her during Handicrafts lessons was staring at her weirdly whilst probably lost in her thought. She wanted to wave her hand in the busted girl's face to snap her out of her train of thoughts, but she could not bring herself to. It would be rude even if she was tempted to do it. Inoue was a really sweet girl and as much as she wanted to converse with her more personally, she could not bring herself to speak to her; she felt it would be awkward. The Arisawa girl was always in their presence whenever she was conversing with Orihime, and thinking about talking to her alone and personally on top of that seemed too odd. It was a first for Emilia Nakamura, trouble speaking to someone personally.

So instead of bothering her out of fear, she got up from her place and silently changed places, sitting in the row of seats behind her. Taking a glance at the fabric she had done nothing on, she exhaled audibly before pulling out her sewing kit and inserted a black thread into the needle as her mind began to rummage for a favourite quote of the hundreds she loved from all those literary books she read.

'Dante or William Shakespeare? Edgar Allan Poe or Oscar Wilde? Dante seems best, but which of his quotes should I go for?' she thought as she tied the thread around the needle neatly but absent-minded. The lack of concentration and carefulness with the needle led to her stabbing her own finger with it carelessly.

Wincing silently at the impact, she held her index finger as she slowly pulled the needle out of it with it beginning to bleed almost immediately. Where should I get a bandage now, she thought almost angrily. The blood on her finger was beginning to grow more than just a small crimson dot and she had no bandages; she could not even bring herself to ask for a bandage, afraid of humiliation by the hands of her teacher and rest of her class.

"You should never be careless with a needle. Not only do they cause bleeding but most are unsterilised which can lead to transfer of diseases into your immune system." The familiar voice caused her to jump in her seat and look up to the side, her gaze falling down on the blue-eyed boy who was occupied in sewing his favourite quote onto the fabric; he had already done a few letters which left her astonished given it had been only twenty minutes since the class had began.

She opened her mouth to say something but closed it back when she saw Ishida Uryu place his work down and bend down to grab something from his bag possibly, and when he had gotten back up she found out just what it was: a first aid kit. The boy carefully opened the box, pulling out a bandage strip from it along with a small box of antiseptic wipes, confusing Emilia even more.

Without warning or permission, the boy took the girl's small but slender hand in both of his rather soft ones; they were cold according to Emilia but very soft unlike her father's calloused ones, making her want to smile but she refrained. She did not want to seem creepy to the boy who intimidated her in every way possible.

Pulling an antiseptic wipe he began to clean the blood off her finger carefully. With one hand, he held onto her wrist a little firmly to prevent it from moving upon contact with the wipe that tend to sting according to many people, whilst the other held the white material now stained with blood. Once done with cleaning, he peeled open the tiny bandage before wrapping it carefully around the wound. Seeing his decent and neat handiwork, he felt satisfied internally and grabbed the first aid box, placing it back into his backpack.

'That was so unnecessary but so kind of him at the same time,' she thought to herself, taking a look at her finger he took care of. Despite of the unneeded ordeal with cleaning the blood and everything, the girl still felt very compelled to show her gratitude towards the boy. He could have continued on to do his work and not given any attention to the girl, but he did not and instead aided her, a possible rival. She felt grateful.

"Hey, Mister Ishida. I, uh thank you. It was very kind of you." She did not know why she stuttered. Emilia was never the one to stutter when speaking; always bold and proud, she spoke fluently even to the Prime Minister of Germany on her visit to Dortmund. Why did she stutter now? It felt almost concerning to her.

The boy had gotten back to his work, not sparing her a glance anymore perhaps to maintain his cold demeanor as words escaped his mouth in ice. "It was nothing, Miss Nakamura. Anyone would have done quite the same." She wanted to smile at him, but the only respond she could muster was a silent nod before she went back to her work as she began attempting to stitch the perfect quote by Dante onto the piece of fabric.

He was so mysterious yet his aura felt so eerily familiar to her. She was certain she would figure him out by the end of one day; she swore to it.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


"Try wind once again, Emilia. You should know how to control it now."

"But I do not! Wind is too tough!"

"It's not."

"Easy for you to say, mother. You were Second-in-command in the strongest of Quincy armies a thousand years ago; I'm literally a bloody teenager!"

Hearing no word come out of her mother's mouth, she sighed audibly before shaking her head furiously and putting her mind into creating an attack based solely on the element wind or air. It was near impossible because she had set her mind on wind being the weakest and most pathetic of all attack and defence for her to to use at all. It was easily penetrable and took so much more time to manipulate off reishi in surrounding than the other three elements she handled tad bit better than air.

She had been in the training base for the past three hours tonight, only attempting to create an attacking power for the element air. She not only lacked basic defence methods in it but attack as well only causing her mother to force her into working on her air elemental fighting techniques for the rest of the night only after showing her how to defend and attack with the power of wind on her side. Quite to her dismay, she could not concentrate on it at all given what had happened earlier that day.

Mister-I'm-Too-Good-For-Anyone also known as Ishida Jackass Uryu, after an endless day of sewing and doing other things affiliated with handicraft stuff, had simply told Emilia he will not be tutoring her for the club classes since he 'does not have time on his watch for tutoring someone and staying in their presence for too long'. He had almost implied her presence to be filthy and disgusting which had angered Emilia to the point she punched a hole into a nearby wall and later compelled her to practice for the club's lessons throughout the remaining until her mother had to drag her to their training base. She did not intend to leave her room or her sewing kit until she topped Uryu where he held superiority over her; she swore to it. By the time Adolfa had to pull her away, she had already accomplished in sewing basic designs onto various fabrics along with stitching torn clothes and other material.

The rivalry that did not exist as strongly initially was burning with rage now; she intended to prove to everyone that Uryu Ishida was an ant before her. An ant she could crush with her thumb without having to put any effort. And she swore that she would act on her clear intentions.

' _Stupid, STUPID air AND STUPID URYU ISHIDA._ ' she thought angrily as a whirlpool of twirling air began forming at her brought out index finger. It was small and swirling with decent speed. Nothing too much to impress her mother it seemed, for the woman still sat in the control center, a cup of coffee in her hand and a bored look hanging in her striking blue eyes that Emilia caught from afar.

' _Impress her, Goddammit. Do you have to be so weak all the bloody time? You're as useless as you look in matters of your true powers. A useless weak girl_ ,' the inner voice that rarely spoke so harshly and tauntingly. She knew it was right.

She was being bloody weak in contrast of her true potential; her own weakness angered her. It angered her to the point her expression went from one that presented distress to one that had anger and a scowl showing. Her anger had caused her to collect too much reishi from the air, causing the small twirling gush of wind not only to grow a lot larger within nanoseconds but move round-about with unimaginable speed. The thing was larger than her in size now even though it had slowly began to fluctuate with its growing size.

Its instability had caused her mother to set her mug of coffee down on the table and begin speaking into the microphone that was connected to the newly installed speakers inside the training field, a flash of worry crossing her eyes. "Emilia, lower your spiritual energy intake this instant." Her daughter did not seem to hear for the whirlpool of air continued growing denser and larger, and by the time she had finished speaking, the thing had grown twice her daughter's size resulting in her pupils only constricting in astonishment.

'Not even I am capable of making such a large gush of attacking wind. What is this girl doing?' she thought, her mouth agape. The speed, the size all just astounded her. Emilia was always slacking in her training according to Adolfa because she never presented a display of emotions that could ever motivate her into unveiling her actual strength before her mother, the hollows, anyone. She always held it in, and persisting concealment of such emotions that pushed her to unfold the real potential she had always led to getting wound up in each encounter with a hollow or when her mother decided to fight her on base level.

'This girl cannot hear me. If I do not stop her right now, she might blow a hole into the wall that will destroy the barrier that would destroy the kidou spell that we cast onto this place.' And in a flash, her mother had left the control center and stood right before the girl with a stoic expression reigning over her facial features. Her daughter, in the moment, was lost in her own mind and endless train of thoughts so it was presumed that she could neither see nor hear her mother. For a moment during which Adolfa was standing before Emilia, she caught the uncommon but bone-chilling look in her eyes. Her eyes were staring ahead and they were so stony, wrapped in an icy glare that did not look any less colder than the colour of her eyes. She was staring at her as if she did not know her, as if she was the enemy and not the woman who fed and raised her.

She looked the same way she did in her visions, and that frightened Adolfa to her core.

And without any warning, Emilia had launched the attacking spiraling gust of wind that could wound and kill on impact at her own mother. "Wreathing Wind One." Those were Emilia's incantation or perhaps name for this attack. She had to admit, even though her daughter seemed to be caught in a trance, she came up with a decent name for the same new attack that she was taught only a day ago.

Adolfa, holding her similar cold expression, raised her hand as she folded all her fingers into her palm with an exception of her index and middle finger before uttering the strong kido spell, "Hado seventy-three: Soren Soketsui." And with that, a loud blast went out, shaking the very core of the entire training base as a bright light emitted over the area, the quincy and soul repear powers colliding by the hands of two powerful quincies.   
  
  


 

Once the dust had began to settle Adolfa, who was knocked back a few feet from her initial position but stood unfazed and without a scratch nonetheless, looked at her daughter who was laying on the ground with her face directed to the ceiling, unconscious and covered with grazes all over her face and arms that were naked for the attack to wound it immediately. Her hair had opened from its pony and splayed all over the ground, some of the bangs even on her face. Soren Soketsui was far more dangerous than that of ordinary Soketsui as it carried greater potency than the latter; Adolfa used it with the intentions to nullify Emilia's much powerful attack. She knew her daughter was incapable of taking even stronger kido given the instability of her wind attack as it grew powerful prior to firing, and so she went with medium-level kido spell with the intention of taking a few wounds on herself than letting her daughter end up injured overall.

Walking over to her motionless daughter slowly, she knelt next to figure in an attempt examine the wounds all over her arm and face. Surely she will not be pleased going to school with facial scars and will be questioned on it, Adolfa thoughtly solemnly. It seemed the girl's fluctuating spiritual pressure and shaky attack led to it hurting her more than the opponent. not surprised; it was the first of her utilising the true potential she continually withheld from everyone. Falkenstein did not understand why her daughter refrained from using her powers to the fullest; the child was blessed with her will and commandment tone along with Seltensten quincy prowess, from her father she had his leadership skills as well as giddy personality, which did proved a liability in the battlefield but extremely significant in her human lifestyle she owned up. She took advantage of all things she had; all except her own powers. It was almost as if she could not find her true strength despite of looking for it during each battle; she felt like there was a barrier between Emilia and her Quincy powers that she was incapable of overcoming in order to unlock and tap her true powers.

"I suppose it's time you open to yourself, Emilia; only then will we capable of reaching anywhere in these training sessions." 

 


	6. Chapter 6

" **HEY, EMI. HOW ARE Y- HOLD ON. WHAT'S HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE**?"

Suspiring in irritation, she realised that Keigo and Mizuiro were two of the many people she would have to lie to about the scars that decorated her face, especially one that was not only deep but stretched from the slit of her mouth all the way to her ear lobe. It was horrifying, really. 

She gave them an exhausted fabricated smile before answering, attempting to sound as nonchalant as possible even though every fiber in her body was aching in protest, "I fell down the stairs and hurt my face." A pathetic and weak lie, really, but what else could she have possibly told them, the truth? 

It was petrifying enough for Emilia, waking up in morning to find every bone in her body in pain only to walk up to mirror a while later in the bathroom and see her face covered in grazes and scars. The condition of her own face had frozen every muscle in her body and scream bloody murder, making her mother come upstairs after a few minutes, ready to answer her frantic daughter's questions. It was apparent she did not remember a single bloody thing from last night aside the fact that she was angry whilst creating a wind attack to satisfy her mother. While the attack had certainly satisfied her mother to a degree, it came at a cost; she had launched the attack on Adolfa and took more damage than the older quincy hence the scars that disgustingly decorated her face. 

As much as Adolfa wanted to heal those scars off her daughter's beautiful face, she knew it was best she had them on for a while as a lesson to teach her a life-long lesson not to ever be reckless whilst launching such powerful attacks on her opponents. 

Both boys frowned at the girl in worry. It was understandable. She did not want to come to school with a face like that and worry everyone or answer their questions regarding her condition. Last thing she wanted was to worry her two best friends, but Adolfa insisted for her to go nonetheless, for she had a lot of study to catch up on according to her late semester admission into the school. 

She was more than glad not to find Ichigo joining her in today's walk, albeit she was confused why he did not join given it had become their daily routine to walk to school together regardless of all the rumours that were scattered all over the school about them dating. Those rumours had become so strong and popular that even Jannik, her own blood, was suspicious along with her mother who did not seem to mind the thought of her daughter being together with a shinigami at all. Both found those rumours beyond stupid; they had been friends only for a few weeks and she simply could not wrap her mind around the thought of dating someone in such a short time. Didn't love require time? Sometimes it was Ichigo who awaited her outside her house or it was Emilia who stood outside the boy's house, waiting with an excited Anja. It was their regular thing and exactly what had brought them close enough. 

When she had thought aloud about Ichigo's unusual absence, it was her youngest sister who told her how the Strawberry had already informed the child about his absence. Said he had personal matters to attend to. Emilia, though ignorant about it, had only given a nod of understanding before going along her way with the two. 

"Really, guys. I'm fine. Let's go to class." With that, she grabbed their hands before dragging the two boys to class with her despite their confusion at Ichigo's absence and her scars. 

When they entered the class, Emilia removed her grip around their hands as she slowly walked over to her seat quietly. She placed her backpack and other bag down on her seat before sitting silently even though the teacher had not yet made an appearance. The girl was lost in her own thoughts ridden with guilty and newfound hatred for herself, she did not notice the pair of blue eyes looking at her warily yet worriedly from a distant seat. 

Her upsetting mood had not been noticed by Ishida Uryu only. Almost every person in the class had acknowledged the absence of the orange-head and the depressing mood of brightest girl in the class with a face decorated with scars. Orihime had gasped in shock when she had noticed the dark crimson markings on Emilia's pale face whilst Tatsuki was worried; however the feeling of worry but fear was not only in Arisawa's heart but Chad and Rukia's as well. 

The blue-eyed girl was the first to always greet them all not matter what. Hell, she greeted anyone she saw in the halls no matter who he or she were. Today, she had not even greeted her two best friends until they approached her. A melancholic Emilia was a rarity and never seen until today. Something had certainly happened to her yesterday, all her friends were sure of it yet they could not bring themselves to approach her. 

And that is how her day went until lunch. She was gloomy, alone and sulking throughout all her classes even though she carefully noted and listened to all lectures regardless of her mood and attitude. When lunch rolled in, she was not so alone anymore. 

Grabbing her lunch from the bag she had pulled it out off, Emilia had began to make way out of the class. Her mind was clouded with the voice from last night reminding her how much of a disappointment she was. It continually told her how much weak she was and how she was pathetic enough to hurt her own self via her attack than the person she intended to attack; the voice went on to remind her she dared attacking her own mother, her own blood,  her life and her mentor. It was awful, this voice. It made her fearful and hateful of her own self. It made her not want to hang out with her friends much anymore in fear she would lose control and hurt them; hell, she wanted to keep distance from everyone within mere hours. She was weak and dangerous at the same time, and she hated it. She hated herself. 

She intended to sit downstairs today and have lunch on her in company of no one, believing it was best she stayed away from everyone. However, all her friends had other ideas. 

Just when she was beginning to make way downstairs, Emilia was forced to halt in her steps as both Mizuiro and Keigo held their hands out in an attempt to refrain her from taking anymore steps. Both boys had large smiles on their faces as they looked into the confused eyes of the girl. "Emi, where do you think you are going without us?" It was Mizuiro who had asked her. 

Giving both boys a sad smile she tried to think up of an excuse but her mind became blank. "I.." She trailed off because she had nothing to say truly. She was done and wished to be in nobody's company in fear her awful mood would affect her friends. 

Keigo at that threw his arms around the girl as he pulled the girl into a tight hug with his arms wrapped her shoulders. The boy held onto her as long as possible, not saying anything which was so unlike Keigo; he always had something to say. Emilia stood still in her place, almost confused. Why was he hugging her like that without saying anything? 

It was only after a few seconds had passed that he pulled away and turned to the girl, a warm but serious look in his eyes despite of the smile that had curved his lips upwards. "Emilia, don't you feel sad. We are here for you no matter what. If there is anything wrong, you can always trust me and Mizuiro. Whatever happens, we are never giving up on you or going away. Us three will stay together until the end of times, got it?" 

Emilia Nakamura was left speechless once again. She stared between both the boys, mouth agape and eyes a flurry of mixed emotions. Her best friend, someone who she assumed to be so idiotic and senseless, seriously promised a never-ending friendship to her; a friendship in which neither of them would leave. They were here to stay. And seeing the raw honesty and purity in his eyes, she swore to stay too. Beside them. As long as she was alive. 

Her silence was not surprising, but the boys decided to brush it off and begin dragging her upstairs to the rooftop. The inner voice had ceased speaking to her; there was nothing bothering her suddenly with her mind occupied thanks to her two best friends that she was so easily blessed with. 

During lunch, all three sat together along with Chad and conversed in the absence of Ichigo. Even though her body was in pain, Emilia continually laughed with the boys at different topics that Keigo entertained them with. As the hours went on, she had forgotten the pointless remorse, the self-loathing tendencies she experienced initially, the newfound voice that made her feel so many negative things and all were replaced with ones that held similar warmth of happiness, love and care. Once they all departed onto their own paths did she realise how much she loved her friends and how much she needed them, especially Mizuiro and Keigo who spent their entire day attempting to make her laugh. They could have gone about their own business not paying heed to her at all, but no. Instead they spent it with her just to make her happy; they succeeded and she just loved them for it. To herself and herself only, she swore she would protect both boys in life and even in death. They are staying together until the end of times and she will protect both them for the rest of her life to maintain the promise. 

 

 

 

"BOHAHAHA!" 

A shriek escaped Emilia's mouth, immediately jumping to Ichigo's side and grabbing onto his arm tightly at the shrill feminine voice that led out the horrendous- whatever it was. The boy halted in his own steps out of fright as sweat dropped from his forehead at the shout, his face twisting in confusion and shock much similar to Emilia who was staring confusedly at Inoue Orihime who was the culprit behind the terror that both the Strawberry and Nakamura went through. 

 

A few days had passed since Ichigo's absence from school due to his mother's death anniversary or that is what Tatsuki had told her the next day Ichigo came back, and everything seemingly went back to normal. Ichigo began walking her to school, both started to hang out just as much as always, his soul reaper duties were back on as she watched him from afar with Rukia, proud of the progress her friend was making. Her scars were slowly healing and some had even withered away with the time even though they worried the hell out of Ichigo when he saw them the other day, questioning her seriously if anyone had caused them so he could beat them into a pulp. She had to calm the angry boy down before he went on a rampage for her sake. Even though his spike in temper upon seeing her face and arms that he examined so carefully after catching their glimpse and telling her to roll her sleeves for him, it felt exceptionally nice that someone was out there wanting to protect and defend her whenever. As much happy she was to have her human friends and best friends, she was more than glad to have Kurosaki who was so willing to protect her alongside maybe Rukia. Her love for her friends was not wavering nor did it intend to in the foreseeable future. 

She had gotten back to completely ignoring Uryu and started performing the best in handicraft club's lessons, competing with Ishida 'Jackass' Uryu like fire. She did not dare share any words with him even when he asked her about the injuries over her arms and face in a tone that was dominated by arrogance yet a minute amount of worry. She was willingly ignoring the boy and planning to for the rest of her existence if that is what it took. Wounding her pride came at a price. 

As for training sessions, the tides had been changed by her mother who prevented her from practicing elemental powers. Instead, she began giving her daughter ordinary Quincy combat training and coerced the girl into practicing self-control as well as presentation of motivational emotions that would help her master the basic Quincy abilities before jumping to elementals. It had become harder than the girl had anticipated, but she knew she had began to do better and that is all which mattered. 

 

Orihime's eyes fell onto the grip Emilia had on Ichigo's bare arm, the brightness in her eyes fading for a moment before coming back up, as she gazed at the two frightened and dumbfounded boy and girl. "Huh? There's almost no excited reaction. Don't you know what this means?" Emilia did not know what she meant by that. Was she supposed to get what the weird actions meant? Surely she did not, but again neither did Ichigo exactly or he was simply good at pretence.

The duo that stood side by side relaxed a little as Emilia dropped her hold around the Strawberry but did not move away from him even by a mere inch. She turned her eyes to the boy who had stuttered "B-Burarei." in recognition to whatever stunt Orihime had pulled. 'Burarei? What is that?' was what Emilia had thought, the strangeness of the thing's name enough for her to know it was nothing particularly productive or good. 

The redhead clapped her hands together excitedly at Ichigo knowing the name, a peculiar smile dancing on her lips. "Correct! Isn't it a fun show?" 'Show?' The girl went on to ask Kurosaki to join in her peculiar 'bohaha' movements until she was caught from her hands by Tatsuki who dragged her away, leaving a confused Emilia and mildly disturbed Ichigo behind. 

'Just what the hell was that about?' 

"Yo, Ichigo and Emi." Both turned around at the sound of Keigo's voice calling them out. Upon doing so, they found him, Mizuiro and Chad all three standing together with their arms crossed over their chest in style similar to that of Orihime.

"Asano here." "And Mizuiro." "Hnn." And with that all three began to chant loudly in sync, "BOHAHA!"

Emilia became even more addled at that, tilting her head in Ichigo's direction out of sheer confusion with a frown twisting corners of her lips downwards whilst his face contorted even more out of sheer disturbance at their behaviour. Clearly he found it far more bemusing than anyone else did and Nakamura could see it. She did not understand anything that was going on, and so she gawked on at them trying to understand what their actions were meant to imply at all. 

"What are you three doing?" She had questioned, not being able to take the whole thing anymore. If she loathed one thing aside being treated as an inferior, it was not knowing things. She hated staying unaware about things that were spoke in her presence. She needed to know; her curiousity always got the best of her. 

Her question had made the orange-haired boy roll his eyes and leave to enter the class, clearly not wanting to hear her friends ramble on to tell her about whatever the bohaha ordeal was about. It was clear as day the boy held distaste for it. 

Keigo placed either one of his hands on her shoulder, careful enough not her touch her wounded arms which was very considerate of him even though he was acting like an idiot in the moment, he looked into her eyes with excited as he began rambling, "This is the signature move of Don Kanonji, the man who is on the coolest show called 'Burarei!'" His answer had brought even more questions into her mind than before. The muddled expression resting on her face made Mizuiro push Keigo aside and break down the show for her better. And when he was done explaining things to her, she only nodded grasping the idea of some human being able to 'purify' and see ghosts at all. It seemed like a sham, but she supposed others liked it nonetheless.

According to Mizuiro, the man was doing an entire episode of his show here in the town of Karakura tonight on the site of an abandoned hospital that Jannik liked to visit and watch from afar. The boy was an all-things-paranormal enthusiast from this age and it did not surprise her really; as a child she had a fascination with the supernatural world herself until she ended up being part of it quite unironically. 

She turned her face to Keigo and Ichigo who stood beside the window where the dark-haired boy had asked if he would be attending the live show happening tonight only to be told a big fat 'no' by the orange-haired one. It was not surprising to Emilia, his answer; Ichigo's visible distaste to the show quite gave it away well enough. 

"Not going?! Why?!" Keigo had cried out in protest, claiming the show not only to be the best in whole of Japan and that only a dead citizen would not be attending it. She did not really realise its greatness given how she rarely had time to turn on the TV and tune into whatever that was on it from day to day here in Japan. Back in Germany she certainly had time, for there was no such thing as excessive training there. Here, the tables certainly turned for Emilia. 

"So, I'm a zombie. Big deal, now get lost." Rude, she had thought dismissively as the big boy began to shed tears of sadness and claim he even got Rukia onto this ordeal which come off as a big surprise given how she thought that girl to be the last person to agree coming to this. 

Sensing the presence of the girl, she turned around to find the short girl standing with a small feminine smile on her face, giving her an aura of innocence that Emilia could easily configure as fabricated. She's a master of faking emotions and facial expressions; she knew better than anyone how a fake smile or behaviour looks.

Nakamura took a few steps back and greeted the girl with a much larger smile, and a small wave of the hand, than the shinigami that stood before her and everyone she pretended to be someone else in front of. "Hey, Kuchiki! How are you?" 

"I am doing lovely and yourself, Nakamura?" Emilia smirked and gave the girl a large thumbs up with one hand before telling her she's been doing great. She closely watched the girl turn from her to Ichigo before greeting him like a woman straight out of Victorian period; her behaviour always caused her to tilt her head to side in sheer confusion as she went on to wonder where in the world she learned that this era is any similar to one two hundreds years ago. Perhaps she had no one that could have taught her how the new century works at all. 

How depressing. 

Her eyes went over to Keigo who did the signature move of this Kanonji man, wanting Rukia to do it with him but she deemed herself too shy to do it before others which only persuaded Keigo to insist her even more. An eyebrow quirked in their direction, she felt irritated by the man and his show without even watching it. Ichigo, who shared similar emotions, had a different person's behaviour annoying him to the core; not that Emilia could see since her eyes were fixated on Keigo who did not even notice the looks she had been giving him ever since he entered the room.

 She wanted him to come and hug her, ask her how she was, or even ask if she is going to visit the Burarei or whatever thing or no. He was too absorbed in Kuchiki to acknowledge her it seems, and the thought was enough to make her jealous out of nowhere. He was her best friend, how dare he give attention to someone other than her? Hmph. 

It was only after he finally got the 'young girl' to pull that hideous move that he noticed the jealous girl with her arms folded over her chest, one eyebrow raised and a look of undeniable irk and fury underlying in those pale blue eyes. Keigo could clearly imagine a fiery flame radiating around her. Taking a huge gulp, he left Kuchiki and went over to his best friend with speed of light, grabbing her hands whilst looking excitedly into her dull eyes in an attempt to make up to how he barely gave her attention minutes ago.

"Emi, will you be going to Burarei live broadcast tonight?!" He had asked, enthusiasm evident in his high pitched voice that had gotten even higher (God knows how) seeing the angry girl out of sheer nervousness. 

Deciding to give up on her anger, she gave him a fake smile and shrugged, the answer to his question on the tip of her tongue. "Depends if my schedule is free or nay. I need to do homework and catch up-" Cut off was she, once again. Nothing out of ordinary when it was Keigo she was talking to. He rose his hand in her hand as he began to shake his index finger side to side with his eyes closed in a melodramatic way before opening them and crying out loudly, "You have to come! This is one of the best shows in Japan and you need to get the essence of it if you intend to live here, Milia. Homework can wait, but this can't!"

"Actually," raising her own finger in the air to correct him, "the shows can wait but studies cannot in order to build your future!" At her words, his face went from pleasant to one that was filled with fear, his mind telling him that she was beginning to sound so much like Ishida Uryuu. Backing away from her slowly, he stood at a good distance away from her with his hands frozen before him in fright and eyes wide as saucers. He went on to point an accusatory finger at her, claiming she sounds like a nerd before running out of the room with the speed of light not before grabbing a surprised Mizuiro from his hand and yanking him away with himself, confusing Emilia once again. 

She turned to Ichigo who had quit talking to Rukia just to catch onto Keigo's another theatrics aimed at her this time. "What happened to him?" The question made the strawberry shrug nonchalantly, waving his hand in the air as he replied, "Just usual Keigo stuff. Don't let it surprise you." 

Emilia nodded uncertainly at that before walking over to her seat, seeing Miss Ochi enter the class. 

 

 

 

 

After her martial arts club classes were over early enough, she took off from the school in a hurry to walk with a waiting Ichigo who stood on the school grounds before beginning their regular walk to-and-from school. It was one of the few things she looked forward to in all her day aside spending day with Keigo, Mizuiro, Chad, Rukia and the Strawberry himself. 

 Though the two shared little words on the way, being in his presence made her feel comfortable and content. They did not need to converse to enjoy each other's company; just being there was enough. Well at least that is how Emilia felt; she was uncertain about Ichigo even though he looked like he did not mind being around the three siblings at all despite of the rumours that were spreading like wildfire around school about them dating. Those rumours worried her at times, wondering if he felt uncomfortable hanging out with her or would tarnish his reputation as the bad boy of the school given he literally carried a three year old child with him. She did not worry about her's when with him since she still maintained her grades strongly and was the best in both clubs she had joined. 

Her own backpack slung over her shoulder alongside the other one which contained her uniform given she was dressed in her martial arts attire with her hair tied in a high ponytail, she was silently walking next to Ichigo who hand his hands behind his head with his own bag strapped from one shoulder and pressed against the other hip, the same permanent scowl on his face. His head was seemingly somewhere else as they walked down an ally, towards her siblings' school that was merely a few meters away now. 

"Ichigo?" She called out to the boy, her new-found insecure thoughts suddenly overcoming her. Did he mind hanging out with her, she had been thinking for so many days now? Did he mind carrying her sister? Did he mind being with her during walks? Did he mind her? Those questions had began to haunt her because she liked his company a lot, and the inner voice continually began to make her question things she never thought of before. She loathed it because it all began to grow inevitably heavy on her mind. 

A questioning 'Hmm?' escaped his sealed mouth, his eyes still staring ahead. She began to play with the strap of her bag, an uncommon sense of nervousness overcoming her.

"Will you attend the show?" Mentally thanking her own self for backing up the worse she intended to ask and replacing it with one that was aimed for a small talk, she sighed in relief silently. upon hearing the groan escaping his throat at it. Certainly the boy had no time for her mind-eating questions that were born out of the newfound insecurities she began to discover a few weeks back. Nobody had time for dealing with insecurities of a confident girl; she cannot let anyone find out she was having problems with herself. Everyone liked her as a confident proud girl with achievements no person could compete with; who cared about her problems? No one, including her own self. She had to pretend they do not exist and distract herself until they go away; that is how they went, right?

Right?

Her train of thoughts was cut off when Ichigo began to reply, the permanent scowl on his face even more defined than normal, "Yeah, I guess. My dad and sisters are a fan of that show, so they'll probably want to go and drag me too as much as I do not want to go." He was definitely not a fan of this paranormal show.

By the time they stopped at Karakura Primary And Elementary School's massive building, he was done speaking as the duo stood before the school waiting for her siblings to appear. Emilia stole a glance of the Strawberry whose mood seemingly lightened when his eyes went over to the excited Anja running over to him. Emilia watched him kneel down to pick the hyper girl up in his arms who nuzzled her head into his neck, telling him how much she missed him in a muffled voice which actually made the scowl drop from his face for a moment, replacing it with a minute smile as his eyes went soft at the sight of the little girl showing so much affection to him. She certainly grew attached to the boy in such a short time since they've been here. Their moments never stopped Emilia smiling ever so unconsciously like she was doing in the moment. 

But the soft and near adorable moment died when her eyes went over to a tuft of dark hair that appeared from a distant, racing towards her with speed no different than Usain Bolt's. Gulping at the sight and fearing the worst, she watched him attempt skidding on the rough ground before falling on his butt, rolling on his head and shouting a round of German curses as his head repeatedly collided with the ground until he finally came at a stop before his sister's silhouette on his back with a smug smile on his face. 

"Hey sis, just came to tell you we're going to the infamous Don Kanonji's Burarei show today."

The sound of bird chirping in the distance was the only sound that went as Ichigo, Emilia and even Anja watched with similar disturbed faces the boy who got his own ass whooped by himself for a show. The group of four continually stared at each other for a good minute or two, wondering what the hell just happened. It wasn't until Emilia grabbed the wounded boy from his ear, pulling him from the lobe of his ear to get off the ground, a mark of anger appearing on her forehead at Jannik's actions.

"JANNIK!"

"Ow, ow, ow, ow-" 

"First of all, how dare you run like that?! Do you realise how bloody dangerous it is to run like a wild animal?!" another tug at the ear, "Second of all, how DARE YOU CURSE LIKE THAT? Who taught you so much curses huh? It's the damn Youtube and internet isn't it? I'm banning it on you from now, that's i-"

Ichigo was left baffled seeing one of the most calm of his friends act like a ball of raging anger, scolding her brother with such a motherly and authoritative tone, pulling his ear so mercilessly that the boy was left crying for Jesus Christ to come down and save him from the wrath of 'She-Devil' (Jannik's words, not his). Calling her that resulted in the girl pulling off her shoe and smacking his ass with it repeatedly until he apologised over and over again, crying dramatically. 

Mildly traumatised at the sight, he turned to Anja who looked unfazed by the actions of the girl even though he could not bring himself to turn his eyes from the fuming girl. "I-Is she always like t-this?" He asked in a hoarse voice. The fierce fire in her eyes had made his throat dry for reasons strange to him. The three-year old shrugged before nodding, "Milia is wike this, Ichi. One time she was going to bwand him in home for calling her a hure." Hure? What is that, he thought but it did not settle his fears at the idea of the sweet, innocent and friendly Emilia trying to brand her own brother like a donkey over a word. It almost felt as if he did not really know who she was. She did not seem like the Emilia he knew at school and talked to.

After the episode of 'Older Nakamura whooping ass of Younger Nakamura' ended, the girl put her shoe back on, closed her eyes for a moment as she cleared her throat before looking at the Strawberry who was staring at her with surprise in his bark-shade eyes. Oh no, she overdid it in public didn't she? A sniffle from her side made her turn to the young boy who was trying to pretend he did not get scolded by his older sister as he wiped his eyes angrily before declaring loudly, "That ain't hurt!" probably to his own self than to the other three in his presence. 

His words snapped Ichigo out of his daze, seeing the mask of innocence cover her harder expressions he saw moments ago, as Emilia looked at him with concern in her eyes, "Are you well, Ichigo?" Her question only made him nod before she gave him one of her usual polite smiles before motioning him to follow her not prior to grabbing her brother's hand gently and walking, compelling him to follow with Anja in his arms. 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**SHE DID NOT LIKE THIS ONE BIT**. 

Standing in the crowd of Karakura's residents with their eyes on the stage upon which stood a bespectacled obese man with a slender woman, Emilia felt ruefully uncomfortable. She did not mind crowds of course, but crowds next to an abandoned hospital from which came the screams of a suffering spirit that sent shivers down her spine? She minded such crowds very much. 

The entire Nakamura family was present there, including both of her parents. Jannik had successfully persuaded both father and mother to come with them, accusing Emilia of being incapable of taking care of him and Anja when such a large crowd of people would be present. She wanted to beat him up right there and then for such a far-fetched lie to make the two come along with them, but it seemed to be enough for both as they stood a few feet away from her, Adolfa having Anja in her arms as both boringly looked at the people on stage whilst Daijiro- well, his case was different. Daijiro was excited about this show just like Jannik and stood alongside Isshin Kurosaki, father of Ichigo as Emilia had discovered even though she stood away from them. Encountering one another led to blossoming of an immediate friendship without their children even introducing them to one another as they spoke nonstop, laughing and acting like complete idiots. It seemed to her that Jannik had also made friends with his daughters, standing with them and watching whilst exchanging words with both girls from time to time even though he looked nervous in their presence from the distance she stood from them. 

'Wait until they find out me and Ichigo are friends too..' she thought to herself, her eyes catching Isshin throw an arm around her father's shoulder before laughing loudly at another jest her father must have thrown to make the man laugh. Not that she minded of course, she was glad her father had made friends with a man she knew must be good given how great his son was. Though, she felt a little sad, seeing her mother stand all alone. Adolfa had never been one to 'waste' time on something like friends or so she says all the time. Emilia only prayed her mother would find someone who she would see as not a waste of complete time. 

It was another dark starry night with sky coated in clouds, covering the gorgeous pale moon with itself. Emilia felt peculiar standing alone in her own place in front of the crowd as she wanted to move over towards Keigo, Mizuiro and Chad but decided against it knowing her best friends would eat her ears off about this guy even more. Tatsuki and Orihime stood at their own particular place together and the girl did not want to disturb either of her friends since she still did not know how to talk to Orihime. As much as she did not want to disturb Ichigo who was in a mood no better than hers about being here, Emilia could not stop her feet as they made way towards the Strawberry before halting right next to him. 

Smiling, she greeted with a wave of her hand, "Ichigo, hey." The boy opened his eyes and turned to the short girl, giving her a nod and a returning greet until he stopped to look at her. To Emilia, he looked so different than usual with a normal t-shirt and jeans on, it made her feel weird being with him. His situation was no better, seeing the girl leaving her mixed-shade locks open, falling below her shoulders, wearing a white crop-top, exposing her lean stomach, with dark skinny jeans that hung at her hips exposing the faded yet defined pelvic bones that were protruded and combat boots that made her look odd from the girl she looked like in the school uniform. That skin that he showed below made the boy gulp, a tint of pink settling on his cheeks. When she caught onto the change of his expressions, he immediately shook his head and sighed, the same look of annoyance crossing his face, mostly because of being here.

"It seems our dads have become best friends," she said, changing the subjects after watching the boy peering her bare stomach. She did not like her mother for choosing such an exposing outfit for her. She did not understand what the point of the crop top was; today's fashion lacked sense. It was disappointing to know her thousands of years old mother knew more about it more than her. Her priority was doing her education, being the best and perfect, protecting her loved ones and yes, fulfilling the prophecy. Nothing else mattered. 

Ichigo looked around to find his father standing contently next to a tall muscular dark-haired man dressed in half-sleeved white shirt with jeans, talking and still laughing whilst below them stood his sisters with Jannik who were eagerly waiting for Kanonji to appear, though Karin was less enthusiastic about it in comparison to Yuzu and Emilia's brother. 

"Thar's your dad?" He asked, a little surprised knowing that man was her father. He was practically on the verge to roll on the ground and laugh his head off with his own father accompanying him. He looked so carefree and laid-back. He expected a more stoic and slender-built man with a hard expression to be her father, but things seemed the opposite. 

His question had made her nod. "Daijiro Nakamura, that's him right there. And over there-" He pointed at her mother dressed in a sleeveless strapped dark-green shirt with combat jeans and boots much similar to her and thick blonde hair braided together, laying on side of her chest opposite against which she held Anja, both bored half to their deaths. It seemed neither mother or daughter were particular fans of this show like him, "-that's my mother, Adolfa Falkenstein." Her mother was certainly very young-looking given how she had a seventeen year old daughter. He had similar views about Emilia's father too. Both looked to be in their late-twenties to early thirties. 

"Ah, I was wondering how I could not find Anja coming to me after seeing you," he spoke, a smirk crossing his face which made her smile. Nodding her head at his statement, she looked at the commentator who had already began speaking, making her roll eyes in annoyance. She did not like this show at all.

"You too, huh?" She nodded to Ichigo. She had began to hate this before it even started. But that was where both stopped speaking and looked over to the man and woman who was beginning to ask generic questions about existence of spirits within the abandoned building. Emilia had terrible feeling, hearing the echoes of a suffering spirit from the walls of the hospital all the way here; she did not like it one bit. 

"AND NOW, LET US WELCOME HIM TO THE STAGE. THE CHARISMATIC MEDIUM OF THIS CENTURY: MISTER DON KANONJI!" 

Right above them, the helicopter roared as they all looked at it with a man jumping right out of it, dressed like a tarot card reader you'd find or a gypsy. His parachute opened as he stepped out in the air, screaming in English "SPIRITS...ARE..ALWAYS...WITH..YOU!" before landing perfectly on the stage with screams going off from the crowd, making her even more confused as to what stood off so special about this particular man. Ichigo on the other hand seemed more disturbed than confused, eyes on the overconfident man who looked at the crowd with a large toothy smile spread over his face, asking the crowd how they've been.

'First of all, who wears sunglasses in bloody night?!' Emilia thought, irritated. She wanted to take those off his face. He looked so bloody weird with them on to her. Nobody wore them in bloody night; there's no sun to block with those! Why wear them?! He then went on to claim he would let them hear the cries of spirit tonight, making the girl feel even more uneasy. Something terrible was ought to happen tonight; she was certain about it now. 

The interviewer went on to ask him how he felt about this place, to which he replied it reeks of smell of 'spirits'. The crowd went on to complete one of his supposed infamous lines "This really..." "--SMELLS LIKE BAD SPIRITS!" before he went on with another 'BOHAHA' moment, the crowd imitating him almost immediately, making Emilia shudder and Ichigo profoundly uncomfortable. It seemed the two were the only ones who found this awful as her eyes went over to her sister and mother who were also copying the crowd's behaviour, a sense of betrayal washing over her when she saw her Adolfa do the move despite of Anja in her arms. 

A cloud of smoke covered the stage after which a guy called out the commercial break, making her rolling eyes dramatically. The security began to command them to make way towards the 'Spirit Purification Hall' the name of which boggled her mind even more. Ichigo and Emilia, even though intended to separate ways after this quietly ended up walking to the same place her mother had already walked over to. The duo stopped over before their families, the glum expressions not going away at all as they had their hands dug into their pockets unconsciously. 

"Ichigo!" "Emilia!" both older males cried out to their children happily, seeing them walk together, both practically imitating each other's actions and expressions unconsciously. The two exchanged expressions for a moment before pointing at the other's child, screaming in unison.

"YOUR DAUGHTER?!" "YOUR SON?!"

'Oh no' everyone with the exception of the fathers thought, seeing the melodramatic expressions cross their faces before being replaced with ones full of pride as both men dragged their children towards them, Isshin throwing an arm around an irritated Ichigo whilst Daijiro placed a loving hand on Emilia's head who was smiling being next to her father. 

"Isshin, this is my daughter and pride, Emilia Nakamura." He introduced his daughter proudly, looking at the other man with a warm smile on his face now. No lie escaped his mouth when he said that. His oldest daughter was certainly his pride. Daijiro loved her to his death, and nothing could make him stop doing so, not even Adolfa deeming her weak in comparison to them. 

He watched his daughter smile politely at his new good friend before greeting him kindly, "Hello, Mister Kurosaki! It's a pleasure to meet you." Proud, he knew he had raised his daughter with the best of manners as his eyes went over to Isshin who smiled widely at the short girl placing a hand on her shoulder warmly before replying,

"Pssht, put those formalities aside! Call me Uncle Isshin from now on," the dark-haired man met eyes with him, giving him a nod of approval as he began speaking, "You certainly raised your daughter well, Daijiro. This is my son Ichigo-" He pointed at the irritated orange-haired boy who did not really look like Isshin in face or in behaviour, "He is my pride and joy but he oughta learn how to treat his old man right." The boy rolled his eyes at that before meeting eyes with the Daijiro and giving him a nod of greeting and a half-hearted smile. "Hello, Mister Nakamura and Missus Nakamura." He also acknowledged the blonde-haired woman standing next to her tall husband, a smile plastered on her face with her daughter in her arms who became all excited and hyper upon seeing Ichigo. 

"Ichi, you're here too?!" The girl asked in a shrill voice though it was not unpleasant to the ear as she reached her arms out to the boy in an attempt to tell him to pick her up now. Ichigo smiled and removed his dad's hand from his shoulder, walking over to Anja. 

He looked at Adolfa who was surprised to see her daughter wanting Ichigo to hold her and escape her arms. "Can I hold her, Miss Nakamura?" The boy asked a little unsure, not knowing how the temperament of this woman worked given her hard facial expressions that were masked by a small smile. For Emilia's mother, she looked a lot rougher than her daughter and husband both. She certainly looked like she would wear the pants in their family, but he could not say for certain. 

The woman nodded to him with a smile, handing her daughter over to him who squealed excitedly wrapping her arms around his neck, clinging onto him for her dear life. Her actions had made the boy laugh as he patted the child's head warmly, knowing how she liked him so much. This exchange of affection made Adolfa quirk an eyebrow as the fake smile was replaced by a genuine smirk as she crossed her arms against her chest. 

"So you're Ichigo Kurosaki, huh?" He looked at her, confused at her words. Why did she act like she knew him before even being introduced? 

"Emilia talks a lot about you. She speaks about how much of a good friend you are, and now seeing how much Anja has grown attached to you, I don't doubt it." Anja did not get attach to people easily given how she had this odd instinct of recognising the good and bad people easily at such a young age, but in this particular boy's case she seemed to be all very clingy towards him despite the fact that they've come to Karakura Town only a month and a half ago. 

Her compliments made a blush cross his face, a nervous chuckle escaping his lips with his free hand going behind his head, "Thank you, Missus Nakamura." The woman tch-ed, waving her hand in the air dismissively, "Just Aunt Adolfa is fine, you're making me feel very old!" Her change in personality surprised him to the least. A moment ago she was suspicious about him, but now the woman had suddenly warmed up and was telling him to drop formalities. Certainly Emilia's family was odd but very welcoming at the same time. 

Meanwhile Emilia who was busy talking to Isshin suddenly stiffened when she saw Ichigo blush and act all shy when talking to her mother, wondering what in the blue hell did that woman tell him about her. Apologising to Isshin, she left her father's side and went over to Ichigo's grabbing his hand and dragging him a few feet away from their parents with Anja still in his arms. 

She sighed and looked at the confused Ichigo with a smile on her face. "So, how was my family?" The boy smirked at her before replying, "They're pretty cool. What about my old man over there? He did not say anything perverted, did he?" She smiled widely at the questions, shaking her head. "Nope! He is really cool and complimented how pretty I am only." The last part of the sentence made him roll his eyes in annoyance, expecting such a thing out of his father though it did not seem as bad as he thought it would be when he saw Emilia smiling whilst Isshin spoke to her. 

"Also," he turned to Emilia with a 'huh' who was grinning at him, "your dad invited our family over for dinner tonight! So, we gotta leave together since both discovered they live only a few houses away from one another." Another thing he expected from his dad, not that he minded it too much. Daijiro seemed like a good man and he certainly did not dislike rest of the Nakamura family even though Adolfa's foreign looks and hard expressions had scared him initially. 

Before he could say anything about it Anja, who was silent in his arms until Emilia told him about the dinner invitation, raised her hands in the air excitedly as she led out a loud 'YAY!' before speaking, "We're gowing at Ichi's house, yay!" At that, she threw her arms around his neck again making both the teenagers laugh until Emilia stopped when she noticed the opened sweater of her sister, her motherly instincts tingling again. 

"Anja, why is your sweater open? You'll catch a cold, silly girl," she scolded softly before standing close Anja to zip her jacket. When she stood inches away from her sister, she stood inches away from Ichigo too who still hand his arms wrapped around Anja whilst his eyes were on the protective sister, realising the little distance between him and her. He felt odd to say the least, having a child in his arms and one of his girl friends acting motherly towards it. A thought he would never think of purposely crossed his mind which made him feel even weirder but he brushed it off almost as immediately as it had come to him. 

However, the parents who watched their children could not brush it off. Daijiro had picked his fake pair of glasses from his pocket and began to look closely at the particular pair with his hands on his knees as his wife was looking at them with arms crossed on his back. Isshin on the other hand had drapped his arms around Yuzu, both staring at Ichigo and Emilia laughing until both had gotten extremely close to one another so that she could zip Anja's 'problematic' sweater up who was in his arms protectively. 

"Is everyone thinking what I am thinking?" Isshin led out, seeing how comfortable Ichigo had gotten around carrying Daijiro's youngest daughter placed on his hip whilst the man's older daughter acting all protective over her in the process of which she was standing very close to the boy. He watched on as his son shook his head, handing Anja over to Emilia before down and attempting to zip the sweater up himself not before grabbing either side of it and pulling it closer together on her so that she doesn't feel cold. 

"They're acting like-"

"A family." Adolfa said, the smug in her voice evident. She was enjoying it honestly, seeing her daughter act like a mother and Isshin's son like a father to her youngest daughter. It was such an adorable sight to her and Daijiro. 

Isshin and Yuzu had dramatic tears of happiness running down their faces as Isshin sobbed, "I can see your daughter take the man out in my son, Dajiro. Can they grow up, get married and have children already?" His daughter nodded in approval as she cried along with her father at the sight. 

The older male mustered a nod as he felt tears gathered up at the sight of his daughter smile at Ichigo like a loving wife as he attempted to zip the small poofy sweater of his youngest daughter, "I can imagine both marrying and have little Emilias and Ichigos running around." The thought felt so warm to him which made him feel extremely solemn on the inside as well, knowing even if they do get married and have children, Daijiro would never be around to see them. And neither would be Adolfa. They would be long gone. But, he did not let that show before Isshin, his new best friend of few hours now. It was a moment of happiness, seeing his child bond with his best friend's. 

Both best friends looked over at each other before shouting the others name sobbingly. "OH, ISSHIN." "OH, DAIJIRO." "WE WERE MEANT TO BE BROTHERS." They threw arms over each other's shoulders as they cried in the other's embrace, realising their future bond will officially make them brothers forever. 

'What idiots,' Adolfa had thought, shaking her head at the mess both men were. She then turned her gaze at her daughter and Ichigo who had began to shout childishly at each other over the mere sweater, now acting like a married couple from a distant. It was adorable to her, seeing both Emilia and Kurosaki boy and the way they were being protective over Anja who was caught in the new cross-fire between friends. She did not mind how Ichigo had pressed Anja against his chest now, claiming (more like screaming) how his body heat would keep the child warm no matter what. He could not see it but the boy clearly cared for Anja a lot.

It relieved her to know that her daughters and son had someone to look after them even after they're gone. She knew she could rely on the Shinigami for that. 

"I pray you choose him after we're gone, Emilia. I really pray you do," she whispered to herself knowing their clock was ticking each passing moment. 

 

 

 

A few minutes had passed away after Ichigo had handed Anja, who had fallen asleep against his chest whilst Emilia and he were arguing, and both had left their families behind. Emilia stood in front row of the crowd, leaving Ichigo to stand behind after Rukia had caught up to the boy. She could not wait for him and had to maintain a steady distance since it was not only their parents who were watching them but their friends too. It was almost like they were helping those rumours blossom even more, which is exactly what they did not wish to do.

With her arms draped over her chest, she stared at the abandoned hospital intently, the darkness of it staring at her. She could feel a spirit in there, one that was attach to the building itself but that was it. She could feel nothing else. As she was watched the crew place cameras and lights around the building, she sensed it waking up. It did not feel good. 

And she was right. A wail came from inside of the abandoned place, sending shivers down her spine. No one could see her expression as she stood in front of everyone, eyes wide and a sweat dropping from her forehead when the suffering shout went on about. Another one came after the first one, it sounded much more masculine and in absolute pain. It scared her to her core for the first time in her life, because this was not one that came from a hollow she fought; it came straight out of a human spirit that was hurting all over. The cries were scarier than hollows. 

Only after a few seconds did she see a spirit appear behind the hospital, a middle-aged man with a hole in his chest and long chains going through the hole, surrounding and restraining him to the hospital as if he were bound to it. A look of pure madness was across its face as he claimed loudly, "This hospital is mine! You guys better not come in! I'm going to get rich and I'm going to ride pink Cadillac and pink Dom Perigon."

'What?' 

The lights came on as the commercial break was over with camera going over to Don Kanonji who shouted out loud in front of her, "Spirits are always with you! Bohaha!" 'Not again,' she had thought as everyone behind her went screaming 'Bohaha!' with the weird man that gave her the heeby jeebies. The commentator in front of him began speaking about it being time for Kanonji's spirit purification and with that the sense of dread washed over her. 

The spirit was looking at Don Kononji with peculiar eyes, shouting at him if he intended to taint his hospital as well or nay and going ahead to mock his looks along with the peculiar hat. He took his so called magic cane in his hand before stabbing it straight into the spirit's hole in the chest, making her gasp in shock and the spirit scream. The ghost seemed in so much pain with that idiot moving it painfully inside of him, eyes practically out of their sockets. 

Her eyes left the suffering ghost when she caught Ichigo sprinting before jumping off towards Kanonji in order to stop him only to get toppled over by the security that was called on by the director. Rukia, who aimed to do something eerily same met similar fate. 

By then, the spirit had began to scream even louder which did not seem to have an impact on her, but upon looking around as seeing the pained expressions of Ichigo's sister, Sado and Orihime as well as Tatsuki's at the persistent screaming, she became increasingly worried. Just when she grabbed onto the chains that held the crowd in order to jump over, use her bow to finish off the spirit for good, she felt a firm hand on her shoulder. Looking around, she found it to be belonging to her mother who held a cold look in her eyes. 

"Don't you dare make a spectacle of yours in public." Those words were enough for her to obey the command of her mother as she nodded before turning back and watching the spirit scream over and over whilst Ichigo struggle under the guards that held him down. What surprised her was when the ghost broke out of its chains one by one as the hollowfication process had already began to take place. 

She turned around to her mother and father, both holding Jannik and Anja protectively against them in case the hollow came for them, and sighed. Her brother and sister were safe, and she was capable of protecting rest of her friends in case that thing would aim at anyone. The strong gaze of her's averted back to the Strawberry whose soul was smacked out of his body by a man dressed in peculiar green traditional clothing with a hat covering the upper half of his face as he smirked at her friend to go ahead. 'Who is he?' she began to think, eyes now on the shinigami now who had jumped in front of the gypsy-looking man, throwing him a few feet away in front of the camera. It definitely looked like some invisible force was what had him tossed away, definitely increasing ratings all thanks to his one of his haters. 

They had began to argue on and about, probably not seeing the spirit that had escaped his chains. When they had finally looked, they only caught up to it exploding away. The sense of dread that she had felt only reappeared, her ears no longer capable of hearing the sounds of people chanting Kanonji's name after claiming he was done purifying the soul as her eyes were fixated on top of the the hospital where piece by piece a a hollow in shape of a masked frog began to form. 

It was looking hungrily down on them. 

"The pain..let me EAT YOU!" It shouted at no one in particular. It hopped down the building, coming for the so called 'medium' and screaming about eating him as he aimed his magic wand or whatever at it. He was in so much danger, he realised it not. But as always, Ichigo was there to jump to the rescue as he threw the hollow away before getting into another one of his arguments with the man. 

Not realising the hollow had already gotten up from the ground and fearing for her friend's life which blocked all her rational senses, she gripped onto the chains tightly before shouting, "Look out behind you, Ichigo!" 

"Huh, Emilia?" His eyes met with hers in shock, surprised she should actually see him, not fazed by the hollow who was coming towards him. The look of worry in her eyes transformed into one of anger as the girl pointed at the fast approaching hollow and screamed at the boy, "Ichigo, you idiot! The hollow is coming at you!" That snapped him into his senses as he turned his attention from the girl who knew about hollow and could see him. At the back of his mind, he made sure to question her about it once this mess was done as he ran to clash sword with the angry hollow. It went on for a few minutes until the hollow crashed its head into a wall which gave the boy the perfect opportunity to drag Kanonji with him inside, taking the fight there away from the people that could possibly get hurt by all this mess. 

A few feet away from the worried Emilia who exposed herself accidentally stood Kisuke and Rukia who were looking at the girl, one smirking widely whilst the other confused. "Urahara, how can she see him and know about hollows?!" the girl had asked, eyes fixated on her school friend who looked worried more than ever; about her secret revealed or Ichigo inside, she could not guess after gaining an entirely new perspective on the girl. 

The man smacked his fan open with a smile on his face now as he replied smugly, "Because she is more than she will ever let on, Rukia-chan." His eyes then went over to Daijiro and Adolfa who were looking at their daughter in sheer concern, neither of them seemingly recognising him. 

 

 

 

After what felt like hours to Emilia, they had finally purified the hollow's soul which made the girl sigh in relief until her mind reminded her mockingly she had to explain herself to Ichigo and Rukia for which she came up with a good number of lies before she would tell them the truth when the time felt right. 

The episode of Burarei was finally over and they had ushered the people to go back to their home, making her feel glad that the mess had come to an end and won't have to see it again somewhere in the nearing future. Walking over to her mother and father who looked at her with frowns on their faces, her brother Jannik broke off with a grin, shouting loudly, "This was AWESOME! Did you see the way he was thrown left and right?! It was COOL! I knew spirits existed pfft. And you guys love telling me none of that shit exists." A fist formed by Emilia aimed right at his head which led to a loud 'OW' escaping the boy's lips before getting scolded by her for cursing once again. 

They stopped their bickering when seeing the Kurosakis approach them. Daijiro turned to his friend with a smile who asked, "Ready to go, Daiji?" He nodded eagerly, "Of course, Shin." 'They already have nicknames for each other?!' Gathered together, Isshin began to walk with Adolfa who held the dozing Anja alongside Daijiro as the elders fell in a conversation whilst Jannik began to take strides outside of the grounds with the sisters, talking about how great this episode was with Yuzu who returned his replies with similar excitement. That only left Ichigo and Emilia, staring at the ground with the Strawberry kicking rocks around, the first ever awkward silence falling between the two. 

Funnily, it was Emilia to be blamed for this. 

"You gonna walk with me or should I leave you alone here?" He had ended the elongated period of silence with his question as she raised her head, finding him to be walking away from her already. His tone held light and it made her drop the droopy mood she had set moments earlier. "Wait for me, Ichigo!" Her feet began to make movement towards him in hurry so that he does not leave her behind intentionally. 

Those things were to be discussed another day. For now, it was peace and silence. No one was going anywhere. All they had in the moment was each other, and that was more than enough. 


	8. Chapter 8

**THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME IN HER HISTORY OF EXISTENCE THAT SHE STOOD IN THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE FOR THINGS SHE WASN'T PRAISED FOR**.

 

And truth be told for such a brilliant student of her likes, she was not minding the entire ordeal so much.

"I cannot believe it!" Boomed Sir Kagine, the physical education teacher in their high-school. He was a man with a tall muscular frame that aligned perfectly with his stern looks and personality. Had imagination been powerful enough, everyone could have seen the fire of fury that surrounded the particular disappointed and angered teacher who held the entire gang of friends as hostage in the office for their 'crimes' of last night.

The gang of so-called 'delinquents' stood in the office with Ichigo looking as carefree about this matter as always, Sado's arms folded over his chest whilst being unreadable by all,Rukia's pretending to be disappointed in herself, Inoue and Tatsuki confused whilst the Scandalous Trio all holding different expressions ranging from Keigo's mildly frightened one with a dark look cast over with it to Mizuiro's adorably frowning and Emilia's half-lidded one as if she were done with the entire situation already.

"Do you realise what you have done?!" The broad man shouted at them again before turning on the massive TV placed behind the Principal's desk which played the recording of last night's Burarei episode that starred particularly Ichigo and Rukia who were being toppled over by massive number of security guards. It looked more humorous on the television than it did in reality and for a short moment Emilia felt like bursting into last fits of laughter before everyone; good thing she had decent self-control over herself.

"Kurosaki Ichigo! Do you know how much dishonour over this school with the airing of this footage?!" He huffed and puffed similarly to the wolf from one of the classic tales of three pigs before turning over to the boy, grabbing him from the collar and raising him to his height. He did not look the least bit intimidated by the closeness for the second their sir brought him so close to their face.

He was still holding Ichigo to him when Tatsuki interrupted his scolding by raising her hand and calling out to him,"Sir Kagine! Kurosaki and Kuchiki were on television so I can understand why they were called in. But there's no reason why Orihime and I should be here."

"Weren't you there too?" Interjected the man with a sweat drop to which the girl claimed it all to be a mere coincidence, hence saving herself and Orihime leaving behind everyone else. Ichigo was pissed at her attempt to throw them under the bus and leave out herself alongside the ginger, but nothing could be done since they were all still very much in trouble. After their exit from the room, the teacher dropped Ichigo and went over to tower over Emilia's figure who gulped in fear at his petrifying expression of anger.

Placing his hands on either side of his hip, he narrowed his eyes down at the foreign girl before spitting fiercely, "Nakamura! You are one of the best students in my class. Ichigo and the rest I can expect this from considering they've been disappointment since the moment they stepped into school, but you?! You're my shining star in basketball! Why would you be their accomplice?!" He was more emotional about this than the rest which made her feel a little disappointed in herself as well. If Kagine had intended to guilt-trip her with that, he certainly succeeded in doing so for she felt a tiny bit of remorse about actions she did not commit nonetheless.

Just when she was going to answer the man, his eyes were caught by Keigo who was slowly attempting to follow in Tatsuki's steps in leave and so the teacher left her and grabbed the boy, raising him from the ground, claiming he was guilty and had no right to leave since he was there and did nothing to stop Kurosaki or Rukia.

Keigo muttering something under his breath about this fuss being around them coming on T.V resulted in the boy getting another scolding until Rukia began a superior act than her usual day-to-day one. She began to cry and pretend all that happened was her fault for she could not stop Ichigo who was so 'determined to get on TV'.

Her theatrics continued on which led to the teacher dropping Keigo to the ground and going over to stop Rukia from crying whilst consoling her altogether; Emilia helped her best friend off the ground as their eyes went over to Ichigo, Sado and Mizuiro who had tip-toed their way over to the window as quietly as mouse. The two had an eye contact and nodded to each other before following right into their friend's footsteps, all of them climbing and sliding out of the room silently whilst their eyes were on the teacher, praying they won't get caught. But, as always, nothing went past the man's eyes. Just when Keigo had jumped off the window sill behind Emilia, the man came towards them which compelled the five to make a sprint for their lives.

Ichigo was the one running possibly the fastest followed by Emilia, Sado, Mizuiro and Keigo as Sir Kagine bellowed after them, calling them brats and so but that did not stop either one from running and stopping to apologise. They just ran from one side of the ground to another side until they knew Kagine could not chase them all the from the office; it was his defeat and their win.

Given how it was the first time Emilia had done something as daring as running away from a teacher with her friends, she could not help but become absolutely thrilled with the adrenaline rush that had overcome her entire body. It made her feel fearless and ecstatic as she bolted with her friends by her side, a smile dancing on her lips with a laugh escaping them after she had gotten far away from the office.

Seeing the figures of Tatsuki and Orihime making ways towards the school building, all of them halted and took sighs of relief. The two girl friends were taken by surprise seeing those particular five friends panting as if they had they had the most pressurising track race of their lives, stopping to check if they're good. Next to them had appeared a smiling Rukia which surprised Emilia seeing the girl was a lot faster even in her human faux body than she had initially anticipated since her mother had told her shinigamis' superpowers were all practically turned off in those bodies, including their reitsu to a certain degree.

Once they had recovered, the entire group of friends began to walk slowly towards the building in no hurry at all. Emilia stood between Keigo and Mizuiro whilst the rest were scattered around each other, some having their hands dug into their pockets whilst others folding them over their chest or back. It felt particularly a perfect time for Asano to drop a comment about what happened earlier as he sighed before claiming, "All's well that end's well. It was all thanks to you, Kuchiki-san" He was not wrong at all. Had she not distracted the man, they would have never made their Great Escape.

Humming in agreement, she brushed past Keigo and went over, throwing her arms over the girl happily before pulling her in a warm hug from behind. Rukia was clearly taken aback by such a physical contact as she stiffened in surprised, but it seemed to be quite a norm for the Nakamura girl who was smiling from ear to ear with her eyes closed for a few seconds, opening them later and saying, "Had it not been for you, Rukia, I would have gotten the first punishment of my life and I would never want that. Thank you so much." Her words had made the raven-haired girl chuckle shyly before hugging Emilia's arms around her momentarily prior to both releasing each other from the hug as the shinigami went on to act in the same unnatural shy way as before again.

"Oh please, you two!" She exclaimed in a shrill voice, placing her hand over her face shyly which annoyed Ichigo to the core who rolled his eyes before commanding both best friends to quit complimenting her. Emilia threw a glance of fake annoyance at her good friend, "Ichigo, don't be jealous of her now."

"Pssht, why would I be jealous of her now?!" 'Clearly jealous' Emilia thought, smirking internally. The boy went on to claim that she almost sold him out only to be reminded that he was able to slip away because of her too by Tatsuki. Rukia only agreed with the girl, claiming it all to be an act and how she wouldn't eve dream of selling out a friend like Ichigo. It was enough to piss him off, but he could not say anything for Rukia's pocket phone began to ring which resulted in the strawberry and raven-head running away together. The behaviour was not surprising as she had already detected the spiritual pressure of a hollow somewhere afar.

However, it surprised her friends who came up with rumours about them dating. She did not indulge in them as someone who knew the truth well and through. Only watching from the sidelines she awaited until the right time for her to reveal her true self.

As rest of her friends went forward, she noticed Chad stop in his steps to stare at someone above. Halting in her own steps there, she began to make way over to her friend who did not notice her until she called him out. "Sado? What are you looking at?" The boy turned his gaze down to her before answering the question with yet another question, "Do you see Ishida looking from one of the floors above?"

When her eyes looked up, she finally noticed the looming figure of the boy who upon making eye-contact with her turned his gaze away, walking far from the window he had been staring intently at them from. "He looked away. I wonder why he was looking at us."

He only nodded before beginning to walk, motioning the girl to walk alongside him.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


"STEP ASIDE! EVERYONE, I SAID STEP ASIDE."

All everyone could catch onto was a dash going past them even though it could clearly speak which had them wondering since when does a dashing light speak? But certainly it was making way left and right of each hall, running towards a certain board, leaving behind nothing but dust. 

After the particular bolt of light had arrived to its destination, 'it' finally halted in its steps heaving like a dog that ran the fasted lap of its life. Emilia was told that everyone who did the best in this month's academics had their names up on a wall on the fifth floor once the period was over and had lunch time commenced. Before Keigo could even join her on the run to see the names, Emilia was missing and already running left and right to see where she made her place during her first month in school.

As she pushed everyone aside, standing next to Orihime she began to read everyone's names on the board. Apparently it only had the names of Top-Fifty Students on it which was easy enough for her to find her name in it. Starting from below, she read each and every name, trying to find hers but came to no avail. Her heart continually dropped as she got higher and higher, until she was interrupted by Tatsuki who tapped her on her back.

"Emilia, why are you looking down for your name when it's right in First Position?" Her words made the girl's head shot up abruptly, finding out that her friend spoke the truth after all. 'NAKAMURA EMILIA' written in perfect Kanji was sitting exactly next to '1' which made her squeal excitedly before she threw her hands around Tatsuki and Orihime, hugging both girls tightly out of sheer happiness. She managed to come first even though she came so late during the second semester and managed to complete all the previous studies she missed out on whilst working on her recent one all at the same time. Achievements like this made her feel she was not far from her dream as a future lawyer at all, and in the moment that is all that mattered.

The girls who were taken aback by the hug warmed up to it after a while as they congratulated the ecstatic girl even though Orihime still felt extremely awkward around her, not knowing how to converse with her even now. The strawberry-blonde knew she was not a bad person at all and very easy to talk to, but she still did not know how to pursue a natural conversation with her which is what made everything awkward as always.

Once Emilia had pulled away, her eyes went over Ichigo, Chad, Keigo and Mizuiro who were staring at the board, seeing the names and positions of each student of Grade Tenth whilst searching for theirs altogether.

"Ohhh..." Keigo had led out, staring at each name one final time before leaning away from the board with hands on his hips and a smile of satisfaction on his lips, "beside the girls, nobody has betrayed us by getting into Top Fifty." At that, Mizuiro told him to look carefully, pointing at number twenty-third next to which was written 'KUROSAKI ICHIGO' perfectly which was enough to send Keigo into shock.

"How can you be up there?!" He cried and began yet another dramatic scene, accusing Ichigo of being a traitor as the Strawberry answered that he studied only because he had nothing else to do (due to boredom). He continued on to point an accusatory finger at the boy angrily with crocodile tears streaming down his face, "Nothing to do?! No way! I always ask you to hang out!" Jumping into another dramatic position, he went on to say Ichigo did not wish to hang out with him because he studied instead before running away in a slow dramatic style, tears streaming down his face whilst screaming 'pervert, nerd' at the boy who was left dumbfounded by his friend's behaviour unlike Emilia. She spent a month with the boy alongside Mizuiro. The only time they were separated was when they left home and during lectures; rest days, these three were always together when Ichigo was gone with Rukia, playing together, eating lunch together and dragging Sado with them as well. In such a short time, the trio was practically attached at the hips and they knew nothing had the power to break them apart.

Keigo had come back with a pair of thick glasses, wearing them close to Ichigo's face that had turned even more twisted with the scowl becoming more defined before beginning, "A person like you deserves thick glasses like these-" he could not even complete the sentence since the other boy broke it in his face, resulting in a nose bleed. But that was not it; whilst Mizuiro was questioning him if he really studied, Asano had already prepared his next move, wearing a white head band around his head, claiming the orange-haired boy deserves it for being a nerd but was cut off with a mysterious pair of scissors that appeared in the hands of the boy.

Running away from him and standing at a distance from the ground with his back facing them but face twisted in their direction, he pointed a finger at them angrily whilst saying, "Fine, I get it! I'll never ask you to hang out again!" And with that, he began to slap his own butt before everyone. He then proceeded to run back to the group, grabbing the half-Mexican boy's hand insisting he comes and joins him, asking if he's not in the Top Fifty. Quite unfortunately to him, the boy raised his finger and pointed at number Elevent where 'SADO YASUTORA' was written, sending both her best friends into a frenzy.

The two ran away from them with Mizuiro sitting on the ground, depressed, and hugging his knees to his chest tightly whilst Keigo went on speaking, "I never thought you guys were so evil! Emilia, we can accept because she's our best friend, but you two?! Not once! I will never play with you two ever again!" Finishing his shouting, both friends ran away from the hall crying dramatically loud enough for everyone to hear on the path which made Emilia smile so unconsciously. Those two were her Mizuiro Kojima and Keigo Asano. She would die protecting them if she had to.

"Uh oh, you made them cry," Tatsuki pointed out the obvious whilst Ichigo was scratching the back of his neck confusingly. He then went on to ask if they were evil what would they be saying about the person number one, making Emilia drop her smile and frown at him.

"I came First, Ichigo. What do you mean by that?" Asked she, pouting childishly. Her words made him shocked for a moment, seeing her name next to 'One' before patting her on her head as if she were a child. "Hmm, good job Emilia. So that is what they meant when they said that you are an exception." The Nakamura girl only nodded happily at that; she liked Ichigo patting her. His hand felt comforting on her head as she enjoyed the contact until it went away when he noticed something else on the board too.

"Wait, what about this guy who came first too?" "Huh?" She leaned towards the board with him realising he noticed another name right ABOVE HER'S, being there with pride and absolute prejudice and it just being ABOVE HER's send waves of anger washing over her entire body. What made her clench her fists tightly and radiate flames of fury imaginatively was the person's name itself.

'ISHIDA URYU'

"Ishida.. Ametatsu? Never heard of that name," spoke Ichigo absentmindedly and getting the boy's entire first name wrong, but it was not like Emilia cared. What she cared about was how his name was above her's next to NUMBER ONE and she never even noticed until Ichigo brought up.

"Uryu. It's Ishida Uryu," Orihime interjected, correcting the boy's Japanese that was even worse than her's; and she was a foreigner. But right now, like mentioned above, she simply could not care at all. Her eyes were glued to the darned names on the bloody board which reminded her of that four-eyed boy's absolute superiority over her. It made her feel  _infuriated_.

As the conversation between the strawberries came to a halt did they take notice of the suddenly darkened and absolutely livid aura of the sweet girl they had befriended over a month ago. There was no trace of that girl in her now. Now, she was burning with rage and on the verge to burst much like a volcano; all Ichigo and Orihime could do was cast looks of confusion on their face seeing sweet Emilia become she-devil Emilia.

"Why..is..his..name..mentioned..above..mine?" the girl seethed with venom coating her once soft voice. Now it sounded like the devil stood between and spoke in their presence. Nothing all too pleasant as it would be placed in much simpler words.

Inoue, being the naive innocent girl she was, raised her index finger and answered a little happily almost forgetting how Emilia had become, "It's because of the letters given your surname starts with the letter 'N' in English and much later term in Kanji unlike Ishida's which is why your name is written below." But those words did not ease the inner anger that Emilia felt so powerfully. Ichigo clearly noticed it, nudging Inoue to exit the scene before the girl gets burned to the ground by raging ball of fire to which she only nodded and began to scoot further and further away from the scene, reluctantly letting Kurosaki take the hit.

'I'm sorry, Kurosaki-kun.'

"HOW DARE THEY PLACE HIS NAME ABOVE MINE?! THAT ABSOLUTE NARCISSISTIC, STUCK-UP, MISTER I'M SUPERIOR OVER YOU DESERVES TO BE BELOW ME. NOTHING ELSE; WAIT UNTIL I SEE HIM. I'LL BEAT HIM TO THE GROUND FOR BEING ABOVE M-" Rest of her screaming rant had become muffled with a hand on her mouth as she was restrained and pulled away from the place effectively where she had began to get shocked glances from all the students in the area, including ones that stood far off in the hall, staring surprisingly at the sweet Emilia become a two-headed demonic creature in their imaginations.

"Lef mfn gfo!" She shouted despite of the hand on her mouth refraining her from making a scene larger than it already was. Too much engulfed in absolute fury, she could not care enough about who held her like that. All she wanted was to go and complain to the Principal about this outrageous act of placing Uryu's name right above hers. That was it; nothing else.

Or maybe remind the four-eyed boy his place.

Maybe.

The person who had seized her spoke nonchalantly, "Not until you calm down, Emilia." Another voice began just right after, "None of us are releasing you until you get hold of your anger." Oh so it was more than one person holding her down like a dog, she thought.

After a few minutes of 'breathing in and breathing out with a hand on her face', she had successfully calmed down which compelled all those who restrained to release her almost immediately. Emilia cleared her throat loudly, dusting her skirt of imaginary dust before meeting eyes with Rukia, Tatsuki and Ichigo all looking at her with dark expressions, mainly from the fright she gave them with the tantrum. Giggling lightly after placing her hand upon the back of head whilst fiddling with a strand of her hair tied in a high pony, she began to stammer lightly as her mind tried to come up with wide range of excuses for that particular outburst.

"Err-" she was cut off by Rukia who grabbed Ichigo from the hand, giving him a particular look in the eye that clearly said something along the lines of 'hollow alert' before dragging him away with herself, not even allowing him to recover from the aggressive yank she pulled.

Keigo, Sado and Mizuiro who all had mysteriously appeared next to her were left dumbfounded unlike Emilia who was offended by being left hanging; not like she minded this one particular time since it saved her from having to explain herself and her actions. Her best friends were staring at the fading figures of K-square in awe, one commenting about the girl's aggressiveness whilst the other confirming the initial rumours Emilia and they came up about them dating.

The Nakamura girl was only solemn about it all. They were getting to fight hollows while she watched from the sides since her mother had prevented the girl from killing any of them after her incident with Orihime's brother. It had been a month and Adolfa still trained the girl mercilessly each night, making her master basic quincy techniques which she did to a great degree now. She just wished her mother would allow her to fight hollows out in the open again. She wanted to enjoy the thrill of fighting those darned creatures out in the open, not in the confinement of the training base where her protection was guaranteed by her mother and father all the time. She wished to experience the sensation of being in danger with no person to protect you; it gave a good adrenaline rush to her body.

Quite to her dismay, her mother no longer permitted such things.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It was another day of school now after a sleepless night with her mother; not that she minded it of course. Last night, her mother had promised a possibility of permission to protect the public from hollow attacks again given how they were increasing in their midst. It was a possibility but enough to make her feel better already.

However, despite of her happy demeanor Ichigo had been visibly disturbed ever since both joined up for a walk to school. She wished to ask him whatever was wrong but could not bring herself to do so; even though Ichigo and she were better friends than before thanks to their family friendship now, they were still not on the personal level where one would ask the other what was wrong and they would get answered with all brutal honesty. Her lie about only being capable of sense and see hollows weighed down on her spirit every day too.

As they had entered into the school grounds, both went on separate paths with Emilia going over to Keigo, Mizuiro and Sado whilst the Strawberry walking towards the class in absolute solitude. She wanted to be with him, curiousity taking over her as she did not really care for what happen but the distraction he was having since morning clearly got to her as well, irritating her more than the girl initially anticipated.

Sitting in class now surrounded by her two best friends with Chad sitting in his own seat, the trio were occupied in a conversation about a dubbed Spanish telenovela about a woman's dead husband possessing the woman's new husband, they did not pay heed to Ishida sewing the doll of Michiru or Ichigo and Inoue spying on the boy's amazing (Emilia would call bullshit on it) sewing skills through the class' door not really being discreet about it.

Not like any of the scandalous trio members cared. They cared about Pedro possessing Salvatore and taking over his body without the knowledge of Isabelle. Keigo was pondering for a moment, tapping his chin as if in thought before expressing his ideas to Mizuiro and a very interested Emilia. "Hey, if Isabelle gets pregnant, will she be having Pedro's child or Salvatore's? I have been wondering that a lot lately." His question had the other two thinking too now. Would it be Pedro's or Salvatore's?

Mizuiro raised his hand and answered, "It would be Salvatore's because it would have his genes." Emilia disagreed as she shook her head in protest to his blatantly wrong answer in her accordance, "Nope! It would be Pedro's because it would have part of his soul and everything, making it his!"

Keigo disagreed with both. "You both are wrong! It would be both of their child with Salvatore's genes and Pedro's mindset, though the thought of three people having one kid sounds very...odd." And with that, the trio fell into the same thought, scratching their chins in confusion with eyebrows furrowed because biologically it was absolutely impossible for three people having one child.

Sado, who was listening to their profoundly weird conversation from his seat only had a sweat drop, wondering how in the hell they came up with such weird thoughts and how Emilia, one of the most intelligent students in their class had ganged up with those two, thinking such odd things.

 


	9. Chapter 9

" **I WONDER WHY ICHIGO DID NOT JOIN US FOR THE WALK TODAY**."

thought Emilia aloud, scratching her head in confusion as she walked her siblings towards their home together. It was one of rare times the boy could not join them even though it had become something like an absolute mandatory thing in both their lives along with her siblings who were weird-ed out by his absence as much as she was. Anja was not talking and her depressing mood had influenced Jannik who refused to talk as well. The road the trio were strolling on was profoundly silent with not even a bird chirping in their midst. Silence was something she did not prefer. It bugged her, and in this situation not only did it irritate but made her feel threatened mildly. She knew not why, but certainly it seemed nothing good.

"Maybe he is busy today, who knows? He won't be available for us twenty-four-seven, Milia. You know that better than anyone," spoke Jannik as nonchalantly as possible even though he looked like he found his absence just as peculiar as her.

Emilia nodded absentmindedly, looking at the sky and tightening the grip around her sibling's hands in case and replying to the young boy, "You're right, Jannik. But he tells Anja almost every time he cannot join us. Why didn't he tell her.." The boy nodded in agreement, both their eyes settling on the extremely depressed girl who was walking slowly beside them, head hanging down and mind absolutely elsewhere. It was a certainty she missed the orange-haired boy and nobody could do anything about it, not even her own siblings.

And so they continued walking, the same eerie silence that previously fell between had engulfed them once again as they sequentially made way towards their home, hoping this depressing mood would just go away once they enter home.

Even hours later, the oldest Nakamura could not help but suspect the Strawberry's peculiar behaviour throughout the day. He did not speak properly to her at all with something bugging his mind since the beginning of morning, but he spoke not of it. His absence had made everything even more suspicious than before, making her wonder whatever the hell had happened to make him act in such a peculiar manner. She could only guess.

For a moment she regretted not attending karate classes as Tatsuki today. Maybe she wouldn't be caught in this solemnness with her siblings acting up over the Kurosaki boy. But, Kagine had told her to take the day off from the club lesson seeing a gash over her knuckles from the fight she had with a vicious hollow that looked similar to a cheetah; it clawed her there deep enough for her to claim it to be a cat attack and get away with it, giving her a leave even though she did not wish to skip. It was only after insistance from Sir Kagine and Tatsuki both that she reluctantly left the lessons and went to pick her siblings up earlier than normal.

With her eyes still staring at the blue clear-yet-cloudy sky, she heard a thundering sound around the as if the clouds in the skies were clattering between them even though absolutely nothing was happening to those vagrant clouds, so still and white dancing above her. And that was when she heard it.

The wail of a hollow.

It was far but it did not stop her from pulling both of her siblings even closer to her figure. Given Ichigo's absence and Adolfa not permitting her to kill off hollows, she only prayed the shinigamis had already gotten to that dreaded creature.

"Emilia, what's wrong?" Questioned the boy, clearly noticing how suddenly his sister's body had stiffened and she had pulled him and Anja close to her as if perils were looming in the air. He could feel absolutely nothing that screamed danger, but if she felt something was wrong then something was definitely wrong; that much, he was certain about.

"It's nothing, Jannik. Let's keep walking."

Both of her younger siblings did not let her pace suddenly fastening go unnoticed. They noticed it all too well but neither said anything seeing as how Emilia's entire mien change in matter of seconds, too serious and too cautious. It was a change of personality neither of them experienced frequently but each time they did, it never felt as good.

And their gut feeling had come true for Emilia.   
  
  


The zz-ing sound of a small black garganta opening right above them rolled about, sending the girl into a frenzy internally. A massive hollow teared itself out of it, sized thrice of Sir Kagine as she remembered, shaped like a lizard with a tail flapping left to right and a white mask concealing its face from her. As the garganta closed down behind, it led out a loud wail sending shivers down Emilia's spine who felt mixed emotions overcoming her from this creature's absolute arrival when she had both siblings to protect.

"What's wrong, Milia? Y-you're scaring me," Jannik had asked, his voice laced with fear much like Emilia's internals as her mind battled on what to do in the moment.

The hollow had turned to look down, its red flaring eyes beneath the mask glowering and meeting her blue, wide in fright one's. The creature, which was floating in the air above her, smiled widely before shouting in its raspy yet scarily deep voice, "Food!" That one word was enough to snap the girl into reality as the fear washed away almost immediately and instead came over her the same emotions of wanting to protect and instinct to kill hollows.

Not tearing her eyes away from the creature that had decided to run at her, she shouted at her young brother who was incapable of seeing anything much similar to his younger sister, "Jannik! Stand close to the wall, grab your sister and hold her close to yourself! Also shut your eyes right now!" Her voice had grown icy and authoritative as a scowl appeared on her face which made the boy do exactly as he was told, grabbing a confused Anja and holding her against his chest tightly, concealing not only her eyes but his too. He was as puzzled as the younger child but dared not show it in the moment; he needed to do as he was told. That is how he was raised. Listen to Emilia.

When she noticed her commands had been obeyed effectively by the young Jannik, the oldest Nakamura began to gather all reishi from the thick air, creating a small bow with a large arrow fixated in it before aiming it at the creature that laughed loudly at seeing the blue power equipment created in her hands as he continued running only for that arrogant laugh to drop when the arrow was released and tore at his head, making him disappear in thin air.

Though the creature was gone, it was still no moment for her to rest. Whilst firing her first shot at him, she had already began to detect numerous hollows appear all around the area, tearing gargantas and screams from her school far away. It made her worried, for another could appear right now and attack her siblings. Where the hell was Ichigo and where the hell was Rukia? Is this how awful shinigamis were at protecting humans? No wonder Quincies loathed them with a burning passion, she thought angrily with blood boiling.

Now was not the time to curse Shinigamis, she had to take her siblings to safety before more hollows appear. She can protect them if it were one, but before more than one? It was too risky. What if one of them gains the audacity to attack sweet Anja and Jannik? Just the mere thought of it sent the girl on edge.

"Jannik, Anja" she called out to both softly, losing the ice she bore in her voice initally. The two, released from the other's grasp, opened their eyes and looked at their sister with frightened looks dancing in their eyes. She hated it. She hated the fear in their eyes. Last thing she wanted was for her siblings to be afraid; they deserved to be happy for the rest of their existence, not frightened because of them worthless hollow they can't even perceive. Emilia had sworn to protect them from the darkness she had been bestowed with, and she did not intend on breaking that vow as long as she had air in her lungs.

Kneeling down, she watched both her siblings sprint towards her before wrapping their arms around her, one standing at each side. They had been petrified, that much she knew. The fear of the unknown was the worst, and she could only imagine how they felt. She engulfed them in a returning hug as her arms went over their heads, kissing them on the hair gently as she heard a silent sob escape Anja's lips. This was the last thing she wished to hear after the little girl had been silent for so long over Ichigo's absence; she loathed it.

With arms removed from their heads and placed around their waist, she picked both of them up from that area, clutching onto them tightly whilst they did the same for their dear life, their faces buried into her neck. The tenderness that had appeared on her face and expressions upon seeing her scared siblings was once again replaced with cold as she gathered reishi beneath her feet before performing hirenkyaku from point to point on the road and finally arriving on the footstep of their house.

Opening the door immediately with a spare key placed under the welcome mat, she found her mother inside with a worried look on her face. Even though it was a duty-full day, she was home which baffled Emilia for a moment but brushed it off almost immediately. Prying both of her siblings off her, placing them down as they saw Adolfa and ran off to them, hugging her tightly with Jannik and Anja both crying into her now.

"It appeared before us and-" before Emilia could even explain the situation to the woman, she had cut her off icily with a straight question, "Did they see you?" implying if her brother and sister had seen her shooting at the hollow to which she shook her head motionlessly. Mother did not care about her saving them; she cared about them never seeing any performance of quincy powers before their eyes. And she precisely had a reason why she never wished for them to see which made her behaviour less painful to Emilia.

Seeing the woman sigh in relief, Emilia went over to the side table that rested against the wall next to the entrance door, finding her scarf that she used to wrap around her face last time she encountered a hollow about a month ago. Adolfa saw the dark look cast in the eyes of her oldest daughter with the grip around the scarf tightening until her knuckles turned absolutely white. "I'm going to change, mother." the woman knew all too well what she meant by that, but before she could even open her mouth to protest, the girl had ran off upstairs to her room with that same white chiffon scarf, her footsteps and thudding of the wood fading before the sound of a door slamming shut echoed around the large house.

'This brat.'  
  
  
  
  
  


The quincy practically ripped her uniform off her body in hurry as she pushed down the skirts and boots, standing in her bra and underwear both coloured white. She opened her closet, wearing her regular clothes that were majorly white as she did not feel like it was time for uniform with white pants and full-sleeved shirt shirt over which she pulled up similar white boots before throwing an alabaster jacket around her shoulders, walking over to the mirror to the mirror. Wrapping the white scarf to veil her face, she was satisfied with her looks as she walked over to the window, opening it and jumping out of it with a haul.

Using hirenkyaku she jumped left and right in the air with the blue platform helping her float, she created a cross in her arms with an arrow already fixated inside it as she jumped places to find numerous hollows for her to kill mercilessly.

Inside her mind, Emilia was suffering and angry. She had watched fear in the eyes of her little brother and sister for the very first time which sent her in a frenzy, and on top of that she had disobeyed her mother's command. For all she was going through and the sudden innumerable appearances of hollows left and right, she was going to beat the culprit up to pulp. That much she could promise herself. What if something had happened to her siblings? She would eat that person alive, whoever dared attracting so many hollows recklessly.

Finding a hollow daring to escape its hole from Hueco Mundo, she jumped before it quickly and fired a blue arrow at its head which resulted in a wail and immediate disappearance. Doing the same with the next few that were dancing in the air, she changed weapons as the same bow and arrow appeared in her grasp as the crossbow felt extremely heavy down on her left hand with the gash on it. Even though she was ambidextrous to a certain degree, she could not take a risk and use her right hand when she could easily slip an arrow and hurt somebody with such actions.

Another ground of three hollows appeared right before her face which worried her for a slight moment, making her wonder how she could possibly them all at once. And that is when her mind clicked excitedly, a bulb appearing over her head blinking. Gathering reishi for three more arrows and creating them, neatly placed one below and above other on the center serving, she closed one eye and aimed perfectly, calculating which arrow would hit which before firing.

All hit dead center, causing them to dissipate right before her making the girl grin for a moment before dropping it and letting the hard expression sit over her face once again.

A humanly feminine scream erupted from a distant below her which made her perform hirenkyaku once again as she ran from position to position before she reached the origins where the sound had come from. Now standing on the ground and looking forward, she saw this certain female screaming with a large gash across her stomach, possibly from the large hollows that towered over her but she could not simply see.

Whistling loudly, Emilia motioned the hollow to come at her as she pointed her bow and arrow at its face. With a loud shout, it ran towards her with a loudly speeding, having his face meet with a blue arrow that connected and tore through it effortlessly before it disintegrating into thin air. Even after the monster had disappeared from their sight, the woman was still cowered in the corner of the abandoned street, the large gash across her abdomen seeping large amounts of blood which worried the quincy herself.

Approaching the woman silently, she took a better examination of the wound before turning to stare at the woman in the eyes. She was in her late twenties, beautifully slender, well-dressed and groomed, wearing a pearly necklace around her neck with a black three-piece suit and light brown hair pinned above her head in a bun. She wore light make up that was running down her face from all the crying, making her look somewhat beautiful with those hazel eyes that had the pupils constricted in shock and fear, bearing her teeth in fright at the girl dressed in all white who magically saved her from an invisible force.

After thinking deeply over it, Nakamura sighed loudly before pulling off her chiffon white scarf and wrapping it around the woman's injury which resulted in cries of pain. The once beautiful white scarf was now drenched in blood, but it's not like that mattered as long as it saved someone's life, right? Taking another look at the wound after the careful wrapping, she only realised that the lady was still bleeding.

"Lady, your wound is still bleeding. Allow me to take you to a doctor." At that the woman began to complain, shaking her head furiously but Emilia was having none of it. Wrapping one arm around her legs and placing the other against her slim back she kicking her at the back of her leg, sending her backwards right into her arms. She began to squirm in her grasp furiously as the Quincy absorbed reishi around her feet, giving her speed of light to take this woman towards the hospital. It was at quite a distance, but her abilities made things much easier.

By the time the woman had gotten quiet and ceased moving, Emilia only sighed in contentment, glad this crazy lady wasn't whining about her own ass getting saved.

Once they had reached to the front of the hospital, she dropped her at the footstep before waving for nurses to come and pick her up. Hoping they got the signal, she jumped into the air creating a perfect platform underneath her feet which she could use to fly towards the closest hollow she could detect. But she was stopped by a hand raised in air as she looked around with a half-lidded expressions, turning her head to the woman whom she saved.

"Who are you? Your abilities are unnatural and work against all laws of physics." She asked surprisingly, seeing as the girl was floating in air elegantly. She only shrugged and huffed an answer, "They're meant to work against it, and I can't give away my identity. Sorry, lady."

"Shora."

Quirking an eyebrow confusingly at the lady, Emilia asked, "Huh?"

The woman smiled as she sensed nurses rushing behind her, their footsteps thumping on the same ground she was laid gently down on by the supposed high-schooler. "My name is Shora Yamamoto... Thank you for saving my life."

The veiled girl shrugged once again, letting a small smile slip on her own face before replying, "You're welcome, Madam Yamamoto. I'm...Emilia." And with that, she had disappeared into thin air, leaving the woman behind shocked and wondering if all that had happened was real or mere figment of her imagination, including that beautiful girl who saved her life so effortlessly.

Seeing the girl save her and then disappear only made her reminisce on a particular conversation that took place this morning with her son. Shora was drowning in paperwork when her son had began to vex her over superheroes with the likes of Superman, who happened to be the main topic of the conversation and his favourite superhero. His rants on the non-existent creature only resulted in an outburst aimed at him with her screaming how superheroes do not exist and how superman is not real; nobody is there to save you when you need it the moment, she had shouted at her crying boy.

Her eyes went down to the wound across her stomach and she smiled, a tiny bit of guilt beginning to seep into her mind regarding her particular claims and actions towards her own child who she swore to apologise to on return. The chiffon scarf was still wrapped tightly around her abdomen, making her realise that nothing happened was part of her imagination, especially that girl called Emilia. As nurses came rushing, picking her off the ground and placing her down on a stretcher, Shora's mind only had one thought lingering in it.

'Superman does exist, and mine just happened to be a girl in white with no initials.'   
  
  
  
  
  


Flying in the air, Emilia continually killed off hollows left and right, the bow positioned effectively in her hand with an arrow inside it in case any of them boo-ed up on her; being cautious was a key to living a careful life or so she had learned over the years.

As she continually flew around, her eyes went to a particular blackness in the sky which she had not caught onto before. It looked like a glowing slit of blackness with minor slits or cracks surrounding it; it looked like it was about to burst open any moment now and that made her feel worried for really dark energy was radiating off it. What was it? How did it appear in the sky? Did it have something to do with all these appearances of the hollows? She could only guess as always.

Out of nowhere, another hollow appeared right in front of her gazing down at her hungrily. It was shaped like a bloody ant and smiling ear to ear with the mask on and red eyes glowering at her ravenously. "Quincy, reh? Never got the honour taste one of your kind's soul. Guess it is my lucky day today!" It did not pounce on her or did anything remotely close to it; it stood aback, observing her from head to toe as if surveying her and finding her strategy. It looked like this particular hollow was not as stupid as its fellows.

"Tch, you'll never taste our souls in your short-lived existence." She gloated, pointing her arrow at its head before releasing it. However there was a tactical mistake she made when doing that; the hollow had already gone missing from that place. Her eyes went wide when she detected its spiritual pressure behind her as she did a quick one-eighty degree turn, creating another arrow and firing it into thin air. This hollow was fast.

The monster stood next to her this time, chuckling deeply which compelled her to launch another arrow at the right, then left, then front and back again. It was clearly tiring her until it performed its own range of attacks on the girl. 'I'm a master of deceiving people,' she remembered suddenly as the bulb of idea began glowing above her head again before she threw herself to platform that was underneath her feet in the air, panting exaggeratedly.

"I'm tired, hollow. What do you want?" A deep chuckle radiated in the air emitting from the dangerously fast hollow as she sensed it nearing her each passing second. She felt it get extremely close to her face as its larger four-legged figure neared hers kneeling one. "You're extremely weak for a Quincy, don't you think? So many great tales about their kind, you disappoint me." With her head hanging low and no weapon in her hand as she had made the bow disappear, she began to gather reishi in her palm slowly making sure the hollow didn't notice.

Once a small blue flaring dagger created out of spiritual energy had successful formed in her grasp, she gripped onto it tightly as she smiled widely before shooting her head up and staring at the hollow dead straight in the eyes, replying, "I'm not weak, I simply choose not to show off all my attacks at once." And with that she plunged that dagger into its head, sending it into screams and wails before it disappeared right in front of her eyes.

A small sigh of relief escaped her lips as she looked up, her eyes suddenly widening in shock. There were so many hollows in the air, it was horrifying. She could not kill them all at all. They all stood in perfect sequence, still as if looking for wandering souls with high spiritual energy for them to feast on endlessly. For some profound reasons all of them were in midst of that particular slit that radiated the dark energy; she knew the hollows had linkage to that barely sealed hole in the sky.

Realising she used too much hirenkyaku as she felt herself get feel tired by a minute amount, she travelled down and settled on an stationary branch of a towering tree, right below the slit as if to observe the blasted thing. Emilia had landed in the park on the hill her family had situated their training base below which made her wonder how in the hell did that black crack, hollows that were gathering around the crack all appearing exactly where she was being trained?

When she noticed three hollows drop in front of her, she created her same old bow and arrow before firing relentlessly at the three's masks, ending their sheer existence right there and then. As she continued on to kill more and more, Emilia did not exactly notice the approaching figure of Urahara, Tessai and the two children behind watching her kill the monsters as if they were merely bugs. The man with shaggy blonde hair was only smiling underneath the hat that concealed his face in the shadows of the much like everyone in his group.

'This is getting tiring! And my hand is bleeding on top of that!' she whined internally, noticing the stitched up gash on her arm beginning to open and bleed again. It was annoying her to a great degree, for she wanted to end each and every one of their lives.

Seeing as more and more hollows had gathered around her, she so reluctantly formed a cross-bow fixated on the upper part of her arm with ready-reishi-made arrows placed inside it, ready for the action. She took her other hand and wrapped the fingers firmly around the grip, placing the forefinger on the trigger before aiming it at the bustling number of hollows, shooting endless gleaming blue arrows and killing them off one by one.

Her hand did not stop bleeding, rather the crimson liquid had began to pour out even more with it staining the bark of the tree. She had sweat pouring down her forehead as the endless arrow-shooting took her energy more than she had initially anticipated for she began to use the tree as her support, leaning her small frame against it while using the free and healthier hand to not only pull the trigger over and over but support the wounded one as well. She had gotten weary but the hoard of hollows had certainly not decreased nor did they stop from coming at her until they all simply halted and upon settling her eyes at the sky, so did she.

Emilia watched with wide eyes as the slit had grown into a cracked hole with two gigantic and chalky skeletal hands peering out of it in an attempt to make the small pathway between this world and the other larger for itself to enter. It had the audacity to look through the miniature space as well with the Quincy catching the glimpse of its same shade face cursed with a pointy nose much like Pinocchio's, barred teeth and those hollow eyes with red underlying in them.

It was a gillian, remembering how her mother had described them to be. She never had first-hand experience with them in her existence, given how they could not fit from the garganta they had in the base. But, all at the same time she knew they were far weaker in comparison to the adjuchas she fought so relentlessly from night to night despite the fact they were created out of hundreds of thousands of hollows coming together and intermingling into that.

The hollows that had intended to devour her had left her and went over to the gillian trying to break into their world which relaxed her to a certain degree as she slumped the side of her head against the roughness of tree bark, the cross-bow disappearing from her arm. She closed her eyes for a second, hoping she would catch a break from the insanity that broke over an hour ago.

But when God was creating her, He had certainly made sure to never offer peace to her in life.

A few blasts went off simultaneously below her which nearly sent her flying down the tree as she clung onto the trunk with her good hand for her dear life, eyes wide and looking around for its origin. Once she had found it, Emilia surely got one of the best shocks of her life.

Some child, in her books, literally had a rocket launcher on her shoulder that killed off many hollows while another child (again in her books) swung a massive baseball bat looking-thing left and left and right whilst screaming something along the lines of 'Jinta Home Run'. There were two other men, one dressed rather funnily in murky green whilst the other who was much tan in comparison and killing hollows with his bare hands wore a funny apron with cornrows decorating his head. She could not really see their faces as their back was to her. But those four weren't what sent her jaw dropping to the ground.

It was Ichigo-- well, the boy next to him she last expected to be involved in this business. She watched with gawking eyes, Ishida Uryu holding a massive bow created out of blue spiritual energy much similar to ones she annihilated hollows with, halted in his steps and listening to the man in dirty green say something that was absolutely inaudible to her. He looked serious and surprised, the glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose as he gripped onto the arrow with pride.

The menos was there but all Emilia cared about was the fact that a Quincy much like her was in her own class and she never noticed it. She realised how the guy she swore she would practically beat to a pulp had been a quincy all along; the same boy who was her biggest rival, the same boy who turned down the request of tutoring her in sewing. Ishida Uryu had been a blood quincy right under her nose all along, and never did she even ponder upon it.

Quincies of all kinds were exterminated all those two-hundred years ago, none of them living publicly in the human world which made his presence and existence as one even more baffling than before. Her kind was dead, making her parents and she the only living and breathing ones. That was a clear fact. As for the other kind that worked different to her kind, the Gewöhnliche, were exterminated by soul reapers two-hundred years ago. What kind was he and what in the blue hell was he doing on Earth? Nothing made sense to her in the moment.

Seeing it as it was absolutely useless wasting so much energy thinking of something she could not grasp in the moment, she returned to leaning against the tree and watching the menos finally tear the slit wipe apart before stepping into their world. As much as she wanted to fight right there and then, she was too physically exhausted to do anymore fighting given the wound on her arm had drained more of her energy than she had thought.

Behind her, Ishida and Ichigo had already taken off at the hollow with the quincy boy calling out to stop the strawberry but came to no avail. Rukia rushed to the scene with Kon inside Ichigo's body, stopping at the exact spot the quincy and shinigami had taken off from so recklessly. She was with wary eyes before calling out loudly, "Ichigo! Stop! He's not an opponent you can take on!" Of course, he could not hear as he had gotten far from hearing range.

Rukia had a look of surprise cross her face when she felt Urahara stand right before her with his back facing to her. Underneath the hat that shadowed his upper face, he had a glint of satisfaction in those eyes, knowing well how everything had fallen in accordance to the plan and just what Rukia was going to utter right there and then.

"Urahara! Do you intend to kill Ichigo?!" Bring his hand forward, he cast a bakoudo  or better known, binding spell on Rukia's forehead which made the girl dazed for a moment before she went down to her knees, dumb-struck once the spell had restrained her entire body from further movement.

"Not at all. Just watch," He commanded the girl with no authority in his voice which made it sound more like an invitation for something entertaining rather than what truly ought to take place. Rukia, on the other hand, had was still very much in awe after realising he had used bakoudo to prevent her from going to aid Ichigo. It was almost as if he knew what she intended to do after seeing the boys run so recklessly at the Menos, who they knew little to absolutely nothing about. They were two arrogant lions thinking they could tackle down an elephant without a strategic plan whatsoever.

"This battle is necessary.." Kisuke continued to say, but his voice had gotten lower with his eyes going from the menos to Ichigo's running figure. Rukia declared her restraints to be a bakoudo spell which made the man smile as he added onto his previous statement, completely ignoring her words of shock, "..for you, for him" His gaze shifted from the energetic boy to the exhausted silhouette of a particular girl tilted against the tree as her eyes observed from above like a tiger, awaiting the right chance to pounce on her prey and finish it off seeing she had no energy to engage in a full-blown battle with it, "..and for her."

Rukia's eyes immediately shot up to where Urahara was looking and was left in a surprise seeing the angled and weary figure of Emilia Nakamura, Ichigo's classmate and her 'friend' of sorts, leaning against the tree and watching the entire scene with a look in her eyes that she could not configure at all. Certainly those pale blue eyes lacked all signs of her as they scrutinised the scene unfolding with Ichigo getting tossed into another direction by the menos. The soul reaper knew the girl was not an ordinary human seeing as she warned Ichigo the moment a hollow was going to attack him from behind during the episode of Burarei.

She could possibly be an innocent human that could only see hollows and spirits! Why was Urahara not helping her?! Her life could possibly be at risk from the closeness to the Menos that could carry an assault out on her any moment it felt right.

"Urahara!" she shouted, suddenly concerned about her human friend's safety that was at risk, "What is Emilia doing in such a dangerous place?! Why are you not helping her? Her life could be in dange-"

"Ne, Kuchiki-san. Like I said before, just watch. Your friend Emilia is more than she'll ever let on."   
  
  


Emilia, who inspected the rascal Ichigo and Uryu were carrying out for a while before getting sick of their possibly-infectious stupidity, was not gazing observantly at the Menos shaped like a bloody umbrella stepping into the human world and taking baby steps towards the particular two that were arguing worse than an old couple. Clearly their idiocy had attracted the brainless creature.

She placed the back of her wounded hand against the trunk of the tree before leaning her head against her propped her as she placed one leg infront of the others, awaiting her turn to annihilate the hollow creature for good. She was no use right now for she needed the creature entirely distracted and thoroughly analysed by yours truly before she gets the chance to finish it off. It was her first time witnessing this horrendous-looking creature, so why not enjoy the view while it lasts?

And besides, Ichigo and Uryu were there to handle it for the time being, so she did not feel the need to tire herself further over something as low as a gillian; she only had to take over the show-down to prove her superiority over the shinigamis and the other quincy she could simply not configure.

And so she stood and watched the Menos fire a cero at Ichigo which he attempted to deflect with his weak and feeble sword. Had he been a stranger, she would have scoffed and called him a 'trash' but certainly such feelings did not exist towards the boy who treated her like a good friend, no. As much as she wanted to go and help him, she certainly believed the boy could handle the attack on his own.

With the blinding crimson light of the cero, Emilia could not certainly see what was going on with either two boys. It was too bright for her to set her eyes upon, forcing her to cover them with her good hand whilst this attack lasted. Her mind still could not grasp just how a Menos had come to their world after the endless attack of smaller hollows.  They had come to World of Living as if, as if somebody had baited them to invade the place in large numbers. How, why, when; she would find out all in due time, she assured herself each time her mind attempted to play Sherlock Holmes in this situation.

A flashing light went out that was no way similar to cero from where Ichigo last stood as it made, crossing over the Menos's body and traveling all the way to its body which surprised her for a good second. It was definitely her friend who initiated a following attack on the dumb creature, there was no doubt about it. Sure, he was an awful shinigami in comparison to ones her mother and father spoke of but it seems he was not half bad either; not perfect like the rest but certainly not an awful bread.

When the light of the cero died out and everything in her line of vision had become more vivid, she took this as a signal to do what she had been planning to do all along. Just when she saw the Menos Grande intending to make an exit from the garganta he ripped to his own size, she spread her legs and took a stance to jump in the air before gathering all the reishi in the air at her feet and leaping off the tree.

Pulling a melodramatic gymnastic flip in the air whilst legs doing a split of their own, she made way all the way to the top, standing right above the wounded hollow as she whistled loudly at it, placing her first fingers into her mouth to call it out. The whistle not only attracted the Menos' attention but everyone standing on the ground, sending their jaws to the ground especially two particular boys.

"Yo, hollow. My friend over there-" she pointed at Ichigo with her thumb, a wicked smile displayed on her lips, "-may have hurt you, but I've been waiting to annihilate you all this time. So don't just run away, you know?" With that said, she began to absorb reishi from the air in both hands before forming a massive azure arrow and bow in her hand. Positioning one in the other, she aimed the arrow at its head, the same grin on her face despite of the fact her hand was bleeding endlessly due to the wound ripping onto the flesh, extending further.

Emilia launched the gigantic arrow right into its face which send it flying backwards, cracking the ashy mask on its face in the process. Just when it was going to fall onto the other side of the green park onto the road, she shook her index finger disapprovingly before leaving her position and standing on the grass right underneath where the umbrella-looking monster was going to land.

"I know mother disapproves this, but I feel like it, Mister Hollow," Gathering and concentrating immense amount of spiritual energy at the tip of her index and middle finger, she began to manipulate it into flames of endlessly burning fire that required her to grab onto her arm with her wounded hand, resulting in blood stains covering up the sleeve of her jacket. When the flames were readily created, she pointed her hand at the open air before swinging it at the hollow shouting, "Burner Finger Two!" The searing flares shot out far in the open air from the tip of her fingers before they cut the hollow in half horizontally.

The last thing she heard escaping from its mouth was a wail of pain before it disintegrated into absolute nothingness. Ahead of her, unbeknownst to Emilia, the garganta had closed up on its own but no one really noticed that as everyone's eyes were on the particular girl who had effortlessly killed off a Menos only Royal Task Force were capable of dealing with.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**USING HIRENKYAKU FOR THE LAST TIME TODAY,** she made way over to her friends who were still shocked by the power display she did not even two minutes ago. As much as she did not wish to explain to them her powers or anything, she was compelled to. Her actions today put her friendship with them at risk, and last thing she wanted was to lose Ichigo because she did not want to tell him she had been a powerful human amongst them all along.

Had she done this two months ago, she would have not given an ounce of heed to it or anyone in her midst now. She was an arrogant, self-centered brute that did not care about anyone but herself. She loved attentions from everywhere; she kept friends to keep her popularity in tact. Whenever she was talked about, she desired everyone to compliment and talk great of her. Keigo, Mizuiro, Sado, Ichigo, all of them she initially befriended for similar purposes. 

But as time went on, spending each day with them laughing and smiling, Emilia realised she did not keep them as her pawns in the goal of achieving perfection. Sure, she still desired it not only in her social life but life as a Quincy but her friends, who she began to genuinely call as that term, began to mean so much more. Keigo and Mizuiro were her best friends, the two innocent humans she would put down her life to protect; she would do the same for Sado, Tatsuki and Orihime despite of not speaking much to the latter redhead. Ichigo, on the other hand, she could not describe her sense of emotions towards the orange-haired boy yet. She did not know what to call whatever she experienced in case of feelings for him. But one thing is certain, she looked out for him just as much as she did for Rukia if not more. 

"W-what are you?" The same strawberry asked, pointing a finger at her in surprise. Her image in his brain of the innocent girl she knew with a nice family that he didn't mind so much was tarnished. After spending two months, speaking and walking with her from and to school, the reality dawned upon him harder than he expected: he knew nothing about Emilia. She was not the friendly human that could only see spirits, no.

Emilia Nakamura was more than she let on, and now everyone in the area including those particular friends who had watched the power show from afar, on a bridge, knew that. 

Taking her good hand, she began to rub the back of her neck guiltily before answering in a serious tone with her eyes set on both the quincy and shinigami, "I'm a Quincy." 

The revelation did not surprise Ishida Uryu who had initially felt the similar of wave of shock engulf him that had hit the shinigami next to him. The girl he had acted arrogantly towards a while ago that resulted in their rift had been a Quincy and a good one, right under his nose. He felt an array of emotions surge through him: defraud, surprise and guilt. Defraud for being told he was the last Quincy, surprised she had been a Quincy, and a powerful at that, right under his nose, and guilt for treating awfully simply because he felt he had no obligations to tutor someone who was competing with on the top-charts in school.  He deemed himself awful for treating her so rudely that had resulted in a rivalry between the two. For all he knew now, she could possibly be the last quincy, and he the last male quincy. They needed to create a united front against the shinigamis now if not later; it was imminent for the thriving of their long dead tribe.

However what caught him off-guard was the fire attack she did. Quincies were not capable of carrying out such attacks as far as he knew. What was that attack and how could a quincy perform it when they were only capable of creating weapons out of reishi with the likes of bow and arrow to finish off hollows?

Pushing his glasses upwards on the bridge of his nose, his eyes met the girl's briefly as he asked, "If you're a quincy like me, then how could you carry out a fire attack?" 

Her eyes fell in a disbelieving look before questioning incredulously, "You do not know?! You're a quincy and you do not know?!" Emilia most certainly could not come in terms with the fact that the boy did not know who and what the Seltenstens were. Sure their kind went extinct a near thousand years ago, but her parents still thrived and they were well-renowned in history of Soul Society and Quincies. Just how did he bear no knowledge about who they were? Must he be Gewöhnliche then, she thought to herself spitefully. She was not only deeply offended by his questions but was not feeling a sense of hatred towards the boy for he gave her another reason to hate him.

"I'm a Selten Quincy, Ishida," she spat at the boy, a scowl crossing her face that resembled Ichigo's permanent one. "Your kind exterminated mine a thousand of years ago. I'm the last of their kind, and after my death-" the mere thought of her kind dying after her death sent jolt of anger and sadness altogether down her spine. Her words had shocked him to say the least as his eyes widened by a good deal at her blunt wordings of what had happened so long ago but he knew nothing of. Sensei had said nothing about this blatant massacre to him so long ago. The feeling of being deceived went pass him again as he realised his grandfather had hidden such a powerful secret from him.

"What?" questioned Rukia who had been now released from the bakoudo spell that Urahara had put on her over a while ago. The former Captain had told her nothing about Emilia's long-dead kind nor did he spoke anything relatively close about who she was. The entire news of her kind getting killed off thousand years ago was surprising to almost all with the exception of Urahara whose face had turned tad bit solemn.

Taking a deep breath, he hands hung at her side before she began to speak of her almost sad tale as a frown had replaced the scowl whilst she lowered her head, "There are two kinds of Quincies, those Ishida comes from and those that I hail from. We always had exceptional powers in comparison to them. Aside from the powers all Quincies have, we are bestowed with manipulation of reishi into and control of the four elements: water, fire, air and earth. The other kind of quincies saw us as a threat because we had always been on good terms with the shinigamis. Fearing we might betray them in the future and side with shinigamis in the future, they waged war and killed us all off with the exception of our the General and Second-in-Command of the Army who luckily survived the battle and stay in the shadows until this very day.

"I am the last of my kind and just..thriving." She finished off with a sigh, the never-ending wave of sadness still surrounding her. She hated this. She hated having to explain the pitiful end of her people; she hated having to make them look weak because of a battle fought and won so unfairly, it would boggle any man's mind. Emilia hated pity and just imagining everyone in the area pitying her and her kind just made her feel awful. She wanted to be seen powerful; not this sad Selten quincy anyone would throw a pity party for. Perfection cannot be attained when everyone felt bad for you.

"I'm sorry I never told any of you. I just do not like speaking of what happened nor telling others who I am because nobody knows us. Our demise is missing from books and nobody speaks of us here, so it's pointless telling. Some things are better left unsaid."

She felt a hand on her shoulder which made her look up and realise that the owner of it was Ichigo who was smirking at her, "Don't act so gloomy, that doesn't suit you, baka." He did not say anything after it which meant those were some words that implied he had accepted her apology for not telling anyone anything about who she was along with her origins. She was glad he had not minded her hiding truth from him; right now his acceptance is what mattered to her alongside Rukia. She did not care about her enemy standing next to her, still looking at her with surprise and immense guilt. She did not care about the man in green with the kids and other tall dude. Ichigo and Rukia were what she cared for.

"Well," the strawberry announced rather loudly, swinging his sword over his shoulder, "now that we've defeated the Menos', let's go back-" before he could even complete what he intended to say, the boy landed on the ground with a loud thud, sending everyone into a course of worry, especially Emilia who had immediately knelt down next to him.

"Ichigo!"

The boy uttered lowly under his breath, "I don't- have more strength." She and everyone else watched in surprise as his sword's shape began to waver before he released an exceptionally large amount of spiritual pressure all at once, sending Emilia flying back right next to Uryu who stood his ground. The girl quickly got off the ground before calling out to Ichigo loudly who was too much in shock and pain to reply back.

The Quincy turned and looked over to the girl before asking, "Are you okay, Nakamura?" Her answer was only a nod as her eyes worriedly looked over to the boy who was clearly suffering from the release of all the reitsu. She knew well it was all due to fighting a creature he had no power or whatsoever over. By releasing all the spiritual energy to match the strength of his opponent, he only had endangered himself. Should this keep up, he might destroy his body.

Next to her, Uryu had already thought up of his next stance as he ran ahead and stood on top of Ichigo's zanpakutou which sent a jolt of reitsu through his body, causing large gashes to appear all over his upper arm as the azure bow appeared in his hand and he began to fire arrows into the air. His move had pissed off Emilia who called out to the boy, asking whatever the hell he was doing, but once she began to understand he was doing this to lower the shinigami's spiritual pressure and prevent him from practically dying, there came a drastic change in her emotions towards him.

He was saving his enemy from death.

Catching a grip of what he was doing, she only ran up and placed both her feet on the zanpakutou that sent endless amount of bearable spiritual pressure in her veins which only made her gasp before she formed a bow and began to do exactly what the fellow Quincy was doing to save Kurosaki's life.

Seeing Emilia do something he was struggling with so effortlessly surprised him for a moment before he shouted over the sound of the shinigami's sizzling spiritual pressure emitting from his zanpakutou, "Nakamura, what are you doing?" He asked this knowing well what she was doing.

She sent him a smile before answering, "Saving both of your lives," and with that, the size of her arrows grew significantly larger as she fired them left and right into the air, helping the surprised Quincy and pained Shinigami. 

Ishida was not her friend and she still wanted to beat him into pulp; now more than ever, but she could not imagine him dying ever nor would she dare let it happen. If the boy does this on his own, he could tear his arm open as she saw it happen right before her eyes the moment he stepped on top of the searing zanpakutou. Emilia was merciful, a trait her mother could help but loathe. Sometimes she hated it too, but right now it was capable of saving not one but two lives.

The duo continued to fire arrows freely in an attempt to save the reckless shinigami's life. What a funny thing the entire situation was to her internally. Ishida Uryu, a proud Gewöhnliche Quincy saving the life of his enemy and Emilia, a proud Selten Quincy, saving the life of her enemy and friend both. It seemed to her that Quincies certainly hated, but never enough.

Behind them, the orange-haired shinigami called out to both angrily, asking what the hell were both doing. It only resulted in the duo telling him to shut up. Upon noticing the wounded arm of Uryu and wounded hand of Emilia which had seemingly tore up even more from this, he loudly pointed out that their arms will tear open. Once again, it resulted in both Quincies telling him to shut up.

"I told you, didn't I? If we both do not survive, I'll lose my sparring partner! Stay alive so I can beat the hell out of you! And you can do the same to me! Kurosaki Ichigo!" The male Quincy shouted at him angrily as his hands continually spurted out blood with each arrow release. His hard words did not meet his eyes, Emilia knowing well he just wanted to save Ichigo being the good guy he was. Ishida Uryu was the kind of boy who was soft on the inside but acted all cool so that others do not mistake him for some tender softie; the hard and cold Uryu was just a facade, she realised in that exact moment.

Looking over at the surprised face of Ichigo, Emilia smiled softly at him before answering next, "I'm your friend. It's only my duty to save and protect you no matter what." With that said, she turned her face back to Ishida who was too focused on releasing arrows to notice the girl gazing at him, a look that deemed him noble in her eyes only. His mind was elsewhere as he continually did he full to save the life of that person who he deemed as one of his enemies for his entire life.

Seeing his bravery only motivated her as she continued to do exactly what he was doing, her pale-blue eyes fixated on the sky whilst arrows kept unleashing from the bow she gripped tight. They were here to save Ichigo Kurosaki's life whether they were his enemies or friends. Quincies, no matter the bad blood they had with who and who, were noble people. Their honour and morality came above their hatred for foes. And on the ground where one saved the foe and the other save a friend and a foe, it was proven true.

 


End file.
